All Eyes Forward - How to Help Your Newsroom Get Where It Wants to Go Faster by Knight Foundation

All Eyes Forward HOW TO HELP YOUR NEWSROOM GET WHERE IT WANTS TO GO FASTER BY VICKEY WILLIAMS

All Eyes Forward details a three-year experiment designed to help journalists become more nimble at change. Better still, it includes instructions (and encouragement) on how to try this at home.

Funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

ISBN-13 978-0-9794204-0-5

All Eyes

HOW TO HELP YOUR NEWSROOM GET WHERE IT WANTS TO GO FASTER

Forward O

ur industry is rife with talk about the need for transformation in order to succeed in a digital information age. We understand declining consumption and the need to consider different approaches to news, alternate delivery methods and a portfolio of products beyond the print core. But to date, there has been little focus on the people factors in news organizations that must be addressed in order for such reinvention to occur with any likelihood of success. The Learning Newsroom, with the help of 928 journalists in 10 newsrooms representing a cross-section of sizes, ownership groups and markets, tested a model to help journalists become more nimble at change. Brave editors willing to look at how to develop their people and change the way they work allowed a team of outsiders to bore deeply into their newsroom’s operations and practices. Each pilot committed a year to tackling the bad habits that have most newsrooms today standing still. They opted to invest in a more knowledgeable, engaged workforce, whose individual potential is unleashed and focused on the future. All Eyes Forward will detail a curriculum that gave journalists the tools to break away from old workplace structures – and the bumpy route to some outstanding outcomes. The journey started with newsroom conversations centered on “Let’s talk about what’s wrong around here” and, in our best experiences, ended somewhere much closer to “What do readers want and need?” But first, those who engineered the Learning Newsroom experience would stress from this earliest mention that we would not put forth our methods as the only means to these results. No doubt any number of circumstances both internal and external to this program – which ran from February 2004 through March 2007 – affected the work. 3

“ We don’t care what you There is nothing more obnoxious than a change, but consultant, or even a friend, who says in the face of a complex dilemma, “I’ve got the formula and this is exactly how you must do things to succeed.” that you learn We ran into a few such experts during the rampto change.” up for this very project. Affecting human behavior requires a more fluid approach. Getting past our entrenched ways will necessitate more creativity. From my perspective, this recipe holds only a few ingredients (leadership must make timely decisions on suggestions from the front lines on what should change and traditional training plans must be made more valuable, to name two). Where they exist, we will point them out. In its final form, the Learning Newsroom drew from knowledge built on decades of organizational development, industrial psychology and change management theory and research, as well as the career experiences of the three trainers, including mine gained as a reporter or editor in seven newsrooms and during a stint in the corporate offices of a newspaper group. Our methods weren’t revolutionary. Our training slides credit a dozen well-known thinkers in the fields cited above. My training partners – consultants Toni Antonellis and Pierre “Pete” Meyer – quoted a score of others and shared observations drawn from working with a host of clients across industries. We talked about leadership styles and practices around change that worked and those that didn’t in companies such as 3M, Google, Chrysler, Toyota and Microsoft. But every conversation ended with us grounded firmly in the reality of daily life in a newsroom. The tools we introduced and the practices we encouraged aren’t new, they’re just new to journalists. We said frequently, “We don’t care what you change, but that you learn to change.” Every pilot rose to the challenge; some virtually rewrote the DNA of their workplace. What if a year from now you could have a newsroom that runs faster and jumps higher? A newsroom that – in the words of my colleague Dana Robbins – has an increased capacity to reinvent itself ? We saw it happen. But we wouldn’t say it’s easy. Expect a rocky start. Count on hearing some tough messages. Depend on it taking more energy, from more people than you could ever imagine. In recounting this high-mileage, three-year adventure, I often tell friends the Learning Newsroom represents both the hardest and the most rewarding work of my nearly 30 years in the business.

Vickey Williams Project Director The Learning Newsroom February 2007

CONTENTS Introduction Learning Newsroom Pilots Modeling a â&#x20AC;&#x153;learning newsroomâ&#x20AC;? Leadership requirements for newsroom change What journalists should know about change Our step-by-step process 2 Linchpins: Steering committee & training plan improvements Research results and project outcomes Some tools Acknowledgements

6 8 10 28 48 74 100 120 152 160

INTRODUCTION Imagine you work for a well-resourced news organization that believes in making smart decisions based on research. As editor, you’ve just been handed an expensive assessment of your newsroom. The experts you hired for the analysis say that on a number of standards intended to predict business success, your team is forecast to fail. Trustworthy barometers suggest your workforce won’t be able to adapt to its market. The staff has grown out of touch with consumers and become too focused on petty internal matters. The news they gather and deliver is no longer seen as relevant by today’s consumer. Yet staff argues that this is the right news to produce, and that, in fact, it is the reader – or even society at large – that is wrong. What’s more, those fresh voices you’ve worked so hard to recruit are struggling, the analysts say. Younger staff are particularly attuned to the danger of audience disconnect. They say they feel the organization won’t take risks and they have one eye on the door.

he scenario above is entirely based in fact. Many editors will recognize the outlook provided in 2001 by the Readership Institute’s Impact Study research, with its clear signal that some of our standard operating procedures present significant obstacles as this mature industry attempts to remake itself in order to maintain relevance with consumers. Sadly, the warnings came packaged as “culture” findings – making them such an easy target for knee-jerk negative responses from tough-minded, toughtalking journalists that for the most part, they drew little attention. And where they did raise an eyebrow, who knew what to do about them? What we don’t know about organizational change can hurt us. Despite decades of research into how and why workforces resist change – and at what peril – most newspaper editors don’t have industrial psychology or change management texts on their nightstands. Even a curious poke carries the threat of spilling forth such touchy-feely jargon; the mere idea would make most journalists cringe. Enter the Learning Newsroom. Thanks to the visionary efforts of a team of supporters that included the 6

American Society of Newspaper Editors’ 2003 Craft Development Committee, chaired by Frank Denton, $1 million was secured from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to test a formula for changing the way newsrooms operate. The Learning Newsroom was a joint venture of the American Press Institute and the American Society of Newspaper Editors that worked with journalists in 10 newsrooms to improve their capacity to learn the skills they’ll need for a successful future. Each of the pilot newsrooms agreed to a year of training and intervention, plus a year of follow-up monitoring. Project organizers wanted to give the pilot newsrooms the tools to break away from old workplace styles. Organizational development experts were contracted to provide training in topics not typically offered to journalists and the project director made numerous visits to work with frontline staff as well as the leadership team on finding applications for the new skill sets and changing practices. The goal was a more bottom-up place where journalists were more knowledgeable of the company’s mission and more invested in charting the course for the future. In most cases, the full newsroom staff was trained in topics including communication and process analysis. Our model: “Management training for everyone.” A steering committee of frontline staff in each pilot was charged with leading an intensive self-examination of each newspaper’s operation. Nothing was off limits, from beat structures to the format of the daily news meeting. Leadership in each newsroom committed to making time for the work, sharing more information, being more open. Everyone identified problems and opportunities. Every newsroom lived within realistic parameters. Management structure didn’t change, there were no additional resources, and the paper still had to be produced every day. The work resulted in measurable increases in constructive behavior by at least some segments of staff in each of the seven newsrooms for which there is complete research data available as of this writing. All 10 newsrooms saw operational improvements. Some saw the launch of successful new products, and a few attribute readership gains to their involvement in the program. The intro scenario’s allusion to a possible pending exodus by younger staff – who find intolerable the protect-the-status-quo habits dominant in newsrooms today – is, unfortunately, fresh data from the Learning Newsroom research. This book will also describe that troubling signal. The pages that follow will report what we asked of journalists, where they applied their new skills and how we saw change occur. Much of the story will be chronicled by those who know it best – the editors and staff who lived it. The Learning Newsroom project has promising messages to impart. Namely, there is good reason to believe journalists can change, transform and remake themselves and their workplaces in order to preserve their vital mission and ensure the success of their organizations. It is our greatest hope to encourage editors to build their own Learning Newsrooms. 7

The Herald-Times Bloomington, Indiana Schurz Communications Inc. Daily 27,500 Sunday 44,000 (Circulation numbers as of entry into program.)

The Telegraph Nashua, New Hampshire Independently owned Daily 26,750 Sunday 33,000

Asheville Citizen-Times Asheville, North Carolina Gannett Co. Inc. Daily 62,000 Sunday 70,000

The Hamilton Spectator Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Torstar Daily 104,609 Sunday 120,236

CM KY

INSIDE Local residents without water. Page A2 Regional map breaks down flooding damage in Western North Carolina. Page A5 Rainfall totals from around WNC. Page A8 Flooding reports from counties across the region. Pages A6-9

SPECIAL REPORT 7 additional pages of flood coverage inside

ONLINE See CITIZEN-TIMES.com for 24-hour coverage of the latest flooding news: photo galleries, video, audio, school closings and up-to-theminute updates. Use our message board to tell us about real-life heroes who made a difference during the storm and flooding.

ASHEVILLE

CITIZEN-TIMES

Fog gives way to sun High 78, low 58 WEATHER, A12

VOICE OF THE MOUNTAINS

THURSDAY September 9, 2004 FINAL

CITIZEN-TIMES.com

50 cents

Feeling Frances’ fury

WE’RE SWAMPED

AS SKIES CLEAR, RESIDENTS FACE NEW PROBLEMS FROM MASSIVE FLOODING: A LACK OF DRINKING WATER, CLOSED SCHOOLS AND A DAUNTING CLEANUP Hard-hit areas

Haywood County The towns of Canton and Clyde suffered major damage to homes and buildings. Roads and schools were closed throughout Haywood County.

CM KY

Page A4

CM KY

T U E S D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 4 , 2 0 0 4 ✦ T H E S P E C . C O M

Are you 18-to-24? Do you vote? Chances are, the answer is no. Go 8

HELLS ANGELS GET 20 YEARS

Judge calls Hamilton-area bosses violent people, a danger to society MONTREAL ✦ Two of the top Hells Angels bosses from Hamilton have each been sentenced to 20 years in prison for their role in Quebec’s bloody biker war. Walter Stadnik, 51, and Donald Stockford, 42, sat motionless as Quebec Superior Court Justice Jerry Zigman took nearly 30 minutes to read the sentences yesterday. Stadnik, who lives on Cloverhill Road on the West Mountain, and Stockford, of Taylor Road in i d i

Oprah Winfrey gives away 276

BRAND NEW cars. A10

drug trafficking and gangsterism. “(They) are hardened criminals who show little or no hope of being able to straighten out their lives and cease participating in criminal activities,” Zigman said. “They are violent people who are a danger to society. They have expressed no remorse for their acts.” Zigman said the men callously dealt huge quantities of drugs without regard for “the vicious ravages of cocaine on our soci-

The Bakersfield Californian Bakersfield, California Independently owned Daily 65,266 Sunday 74,376

SPEC

Corpus Christi Caller-Times Corpus Christi, Texas E.W. Scripps Co. Daily 57,591 Sunday 75.869

Lincoln Journal Star Lincoln, Nebraska Lee Enterprises Inc. Daily 74,021 Sunday 81,742

The News Tribune Tacoma, Washington The McClatchy Co. Daily 130,000 Sunday 150,000

San Jose Mercury News San Jose, California MediaNews Group Inc. Daily 259,649 Sunday 277,632 *

Incredible deal

Sarasota Herald-Tribune Sarasota, Florida New York Times Co. Daily 111,337 Sunday 133,537

Walt Disney will buy Pixar, making the animation studio’s CEO the largest Disney shareholder. A MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2006

INSIDE

KNOWING BEANS ABOUT YOUR COFFEE New cafes, including several that roast their own beans, are adding variety to the java experience in Southwest Florida. Florida West

Page 1D 50¢

Flood zones Using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Wildlife Federation produced this map of Florida, showing areas — in red — that would flood with a 10-foot rise in sea level. That’s the maximum rise expected in the panel’s studies by the year 2100, though other studies have reached conclusions that put the expected sea level rise at closer to 20 feet.

Danger in a few degrees

Mario Lemieux, one of hockey’s greatest players, retired Tuesday for the second time. Page 1C

By DOUG SWORD

NASA finds new evidence that the world is, indeed, getting warmer. Environmentalists say this bolsters their call for changes in policies on greenhouse gas emissions. By CATHY ZOLLO cathy.zollo@heraldtribune.com

STATE HEALTH DEPARTMENT

PHYSICIAN TOLD TO STOP PRACTICE State officials have ordered a Bradenton gynecologist to stop treating women. Page 1D

The year 2005 was the hottest in a century, and the five warmest years in the last 100 years have occurred since 1998. And climate experts say the warming trend may be accelerating, with the average global temperature rising faster in the past 25 to 30 years than any time in recent centuries.

THE CAUSE?

GREENHOUSE GASES

Jim Ley opposes funding a study doug.sword@heraldtribune.com

PRO HOCKEY

SUPER MARIO: GAME OVER

County rejects Robarts proposal

SOURCE: The National Wildlife Federation and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

POTENTIAL EFFECTS ON FLORIDA

MORE INTENSE HURRICANES

COASTAL FLOODING

SARASOTA — The Fair Association’s pitch for a $40 million overhaul that includes replacing the aging Robarts Arena was rebuffed Tuesday by county officials. The Sarasota County Agricultural Fair Association has never built anything on this scale and lacks the financial wherewithal to do so, County Administrator Jim Ley said in a memo that opposed the county funding a $250,000 study of the fair’s proposal. It marks the latest rejection by the county over the past several years of Fair Association plans to replace Robarts, a 40-year-old sports arena nearing the end of its use. Ley placed the cost of the project much higher — at $60 million — which would be “a large venture even for the county.” The Fair Association’s lack of experience in managing such a large project would have to be disclosed in bond documents and made available to people who would lend money to the project, he noted. Since the fair board couldn’t hope to borrow enough money for the project, the city of Sara-

Modelinga ‘learning newsroom’ “It’s not a program that begins and ends. It’s a program that helps you look at what needs to be done in terms of changing the defensive culture into something more constructive, and you need to work on that and keep it going.” BOB ZALTSBERG, editor, The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana

t would be hard to imagine a newspaper thrust more forcefully into the upheaval of today’s shifting media landscape than the San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, Calif. A newsroom that breaks stories for a global audience on hometown corporations Yahoo and Apple found itself in 2006 reporting on the breakup of its own corporate parent, Knight Ridder. Before year’s end, the newspaper would be sold twice: first to The McClatchy Co., then to MediaNews Group. Its purchase by MediaNews is, as of this writing, the subject of a court challenge that could change the scenario yet again for the journalists who work there. “The status quo is over,” one staffer said in a training session that January, when the newspaper became the ninth of 10 pilot Learning Newsrooms. Throughout the yearlong project, staff at other pilots asked after the well-being of their peers in San Jose. They questioned the decision to join this program with so much turmoil already in the air. The concern was misplaced. If ever there were a newsroom with clarity around the need for reinvention, it was the staff of the San Jose Mercury News. From our first conversations in late 2005, Editor Susan Goldberg saw value in giving her staff the tools to adapt more quickly to changes in the marketplace. The committee of frontline staffers charged with examining current operations was future-focused, moving with the haste borne of practicality. “Why wait for a new owner to tell us how we can best relate to the digitally savvy news consumers we know are our audience?” was an often-voiced sentiment. “Let’s be ready with a plan of our own.” The editors of the Learning Newsrooms are brave souls. To agree to a yearlong intervention that entails inviting staff to delve deeply into the ways things work, how people communicate and other operational issues in order to engage more people in mapping a smart path for the future is a scary prospect for the most enlightened leader. Goldberg and the Merc’s managing editor, David

Herald-Times Managing Editor Andrea Murray, Editor Bob Zaltsberg and Janice Rickert listen during a January 2005 Learning Newsroom training session on improving communication.

Satterfield, top the list for courage, poise and timing. Every newsroom is time-starved, wanting in resources and anxious. If San Jose could make headway on newsroom change in 2006, any newsroom can.

The genesis of this work It was a smart group of journalists who in 2003 conceived of the Learning Newsroom project. The delegation representing the American Press Institute, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Knight Foundation and others wasn’t looking for an academic exercise but rather, practical outcomes. They envisioned an experiment with two missions:

> To improve training and development and > To test a curriculum aimed at improving newsroom culture. Culture: the very word causes journalists to bristle. It seems amorphous and foreign, the stuff of group therapy sessions, not of pragmatic thinkers trained to be skeptical. Culture simply refers to how people in an organization work together. Because improving culture necessarily means increasing employee engagement and outward focus on the consumer, looked at another way, the charge of the Learning Newsroom was to better develop journalists in order to produce a better newspaper. Two years earlier, the Readership Institute had sent the newspaper industry into the new millennium with a direct-line correlation between workplace culture and readership, and the assessment that in newspapers, ours was, in a word, lousy. Believe the data or deny research in hundreds of other businesses as well: Operational styles within organizations can thwart marketplace goals. In “Inside Newspaper Culture,” Readership Institute researchers note: “Newspaper readership has continued to decline for three decades despite extensive research into reader issues and many reader-growth activities at newspapers across the country. So from the outset of the Impact Study, the Readership Institute felt there must be an internal, organizational factor at play that was keeping newspapers from doing the things they knew they should do.” The Institute’s harsh diagnosis: Most newspapers in America exhibit strong, top-down management styles, with responsibility for ideas and answers residing only at the highest level. There’s insufficient attention paid to winning buy-in for new initiatives. Frontline staff stands shackled against its own shot at innovation for fear of taking risks or making a mistake. Employee perspectives narrow; doing things the accepted way is both familiar and the path of least resistance. In real time, in real newsrooms, this translates daily as old ways are defended, reader preferences are diminished and “we are awfully good at killing ideas in the cradle,” as Lincoln Journal Star Editor Kathleen Rutledge put it during a Learning Newsroom session at the Pilot No. 7 Lincoln, Neb., newsroom. Project facilitators heard it said time and again that getting sufficient “sign off” to remedy even the smallest glitch in the system can, at times, seem too exhausting a prospect to consider. Since the Impact Study, released in 2001 as a multidimensional look at newspaper consumption, products and organizational styles in 100 diverse mar12

kets, the industry has shown a greater inclination to take a hard look at itself. There is an increasing drumbeat around reinvention and transformation, and open challenges to begin the task with changes from within, thanks in part to bloggers such as journalist Tim Porter, who has been rattling cages with his First Draft column. “If we are going to reinvent newspapers – and we are – we must reinvent the leadership of newspapers,” he said in one post. “The traditional top-down, opaque, defensive style of management found in most newsrooms cannot foster a new future. It only oppresses those who want change, giving them two choices: Flee or be frustrated.” Another voice favoring a tough self-assessment is that of Rich Gordon, associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., who in a November 2006 Web site posting – under the subhead “It’s the people, stupid” – said: “The real barriers to change – and, perhaps, survival – are cultural and organizational.” Some major initiatives promise to help maintain the focus, including API’s Newspaper Next project and the Newspaper Association of America’s effort to identify core competencies for transformational leadership in news organizations. Even with the volume becoming louder around these topics, most editors fail to see the link between our inclination to stand still – or worse, devote energy to looking longingly backward – and a stifling workplace culture. But any editor who can call to mind those in the newsroom who seem to argue for sport – particularly to argue against new ways of doing things – will recognize this kind of behavior can be counter-productive in an era of reinvention. So the Learning Newsroom’s mission actually can be boiled down to a simple question: Can journalists change?

The Learning Organization model Once the mission was set and funding secured, those tasked with creating a Learning Newsroom had to determine precisely how to go about trying to build one. Specifically, what would the experiment entail? What would be its beginning, middle and end? How would progress be measured? Frank Denton and ASNE’s Craft Development Committee, in their Learning Newsroom handbook of 2003, explored the core concepts of organizational learning and posed the question: If organizations in other industries can use these tools to remake themselves in the face of declining consumer demand, why can’t newspapers? In the book, Denton suggested specifically that newsrooms would be wise to try to model “a learning organization,” a workplace where people are quicker to adapt when the need for change arises. The term comes out of a body of knowledge built over more than three decades and incorporating the research of a number of authors and practitioners, including perhaps most notably educator, author and management theorist Peter M. Senge. In Senge’s ideal learning organization, workers become skilled at continually reinventing themselves, “continually learning how to learn together.” Here is how Senge’s work was translated into a vision for the Learning Newsroom that would invite buy-in from journalists. If the pilot experiment was successful, journalists would be better equipped to: 13

> Design a future > Make connections > Identify destructive competition > Turn to collaboration > Open the journalistic process > Help other journalists to grow > Help the newspaper to grow Later chapters will delve into details of the training curriculum intended to start the newsroom along this path and the outcomes we saw. So not to get ahead of the story, but to try to help complete an early picture on what success can look like when newsroom change begins to take hold, here is a model to help explain the work:

Traditional Newsroom

Learning Newsroom

Information held by a few

Information shared

Strategy is a secret

Goals are well-known

Training is static

Trains to goals

Command/control styles

Ideas flow bottom-up

Waits for a rescue

Takes smart risks

Clings to old ways

Anticipates change

Senge and other authors have various if complementary routes to get to a learning organization. Once we had the goal in mind, the task was to build a pilot program that would give us the best chance of seeing the progression above in as many environments as practical within the timeframe of a 36-month grant.

Discrete elements of the program With the help of two organizational development experts who would go on to serve with the Learning Newsroom director as trainer/facilitators in the pilots, API and ASNE leadership, including Denton, came together to discern the nuts and bolts of what would become the pilot experience. We settled upon five training modules targeted to get at the primary triggers for helping a workforce become more nimble at change, emphasizing greater employee engagement and changed management practices. The training topics were:

> Communication > Business literacy > Systems thinking/process analysis > Innovation > Time management/workout 14

The five training sessions would be half-day programs and each would include practical tools and exercises. They would be delivered to the entire newsroom staff where possible, over the course of a year. The training year would be followed by a year of follow-up to monitor progress in as many pilots as the project calendar would accommodate. At three points over the over the project life, delegations from the pilots would come together for symposia at API to share their experiences with each other and API staff – who would incorporate lessons learned into future API programming for the benefit of the industry. In what later came to be the most essential keys to success, criteria were set for:

a. Creating a committee of frontline staff in each pilot charged with analyzing current operations with an eye to finding what needed to change and b. Requiring a thorough review of current training plans as part of this work. Interspersed between the training sessions, there were visits by the project director for a committee workday to help facilitate their conversations in finding applications for the new tools. Ten was settled upon as a realistic number of pilots, taking into account the radical change we hoped for, the depth of interaction that would be needed to have the best chance of achieving it, project resources and timeframe. The investment in each pilot would be significant, so beyond this initial planning session, a few weeks were spent devising an application process to discern partners most likely to succeed and to determine the survey tools to evaluate the program’s success. There was some early discussion that the program include traditional skills training for journalists – such as design, narrative writing or watchdog reporting. As vital as such classes can be, it proved fortunate that concerns over duplicating other training initiatives steered us from that thinking. The Learning Newsroom curriculum – which from its first application was dubbed “management training for everyone” – was geared specifically to help facilitate change. It is one of several ways the program distinguished itself from other industry programs or even the deeper intervention that can come through consulting work. It proved essential that application of the tools was left totally open to each newsroom’s interpretation. From the first conversations with applicants, to the training sessions, to work with the committees, care was taken by the project’s facilitators not to prescribe what needed to change.

Ownership is key The newsrooms needed to set their own agendas based on a multitude of factors including marketplace needs, previous track record with other change initiatives, and even the leadership style of the top editor. This type of venture must be flexible enough to suit local needs, not follow an outsider’s master plan. The pilots used their Learning Newsroom work to support journalistic goals and business goals — from redesigning office space to restructuring beats to launching new sections that better appeal to younger readers; from increasing watchdog reporting to launching new products. 15

We encouraged and saw delivery of some gee-whiz results in each. We saw much more smart, future-focused and collaborative thinking. But it would be wrong to attribute any of these outcomes solely to a series of training classes, however valuable the topics or credible the trainer. The route to success through ventures like the Learning Newsroom is more indirect. The chosen training topics helped trigger thinking and start conversations. Small operational fixes and a few changed practices – for example, inviting reporters to offer input on the hiring of a new city editor – counted as early wins. Managers slowly became more inclusive, skepticism decreased and more frontline staffers bought in. Bigger thinking began to occur around bigger goals. From the start, language was adopted that – though at the start raised some eyebrows with the partner newspapers – proved useful in continuously drawing us back to the reasons for this effort. In 10 visits and dozens of other interactions with each pilot over the training year, including conference calls and e-mails, we talked unapologetically about business strategy and the need for the business to succeed in order for journalism to have a future. We talked openly about hierarchical leadership styles and why they don’t facilitate change. We talked about bad habits in the frontlines as well, namely the tendency to oppositional mindsets that can shut down new ideas, perpetuate critics’ claims of arrogance and increase the divide with readers. It established a forthright communication style that journalists can respect.

The ideal partner for a Learning Newsroom pilot With a partnership plan set, we were left to look for 10 brave newsrooms ready for a change venture such as this. The ideal applicants were newsrooms already focusing significant energy on new strategies for growing readership. By the time candidates were solicited for the first pilots, the Readership Institute had been urging new approaches to news for more than two and a half years. Its Impact Study results had by then been well-publicized, at least among newspaper leadership ranks. Scores of papers were trying at least some of the institute’s easier recommendations, such as promoting upcoming content or trying to add utility in the presentation of the news. Changing culture is a tall order in any organization; experts say expect to give it three to five years of hard work. Tackling it with smart, overworked journalists, who have dynamite vocabularies to describe why the democracy would be imperiled if they change a single thing about the way they work, would have been nearly unthinkable where there had been no conversation to date around the fact that readers increasingly find newspapers of declining value. And great journalism goes nowhere without audience. In addition to trying to gauge appetite for building a place where there’s a greater outward focus on consumer needs, because this venture put such a priority on career development for journalists, we also looked for a track record for training and development. We were as interested in newsrooms that trained smart as we were in finding the few that have committed to big-dollar training budgets. Study after study has proven newspapers fail to invest sufficiently in the development of their people. In the end, surveys of staffs at the pilots asked more than 20 questions around training. Is staff development emphasized as a responsibility of the job? Are training opportunities made known? Does staff feel their direct supervisor makes time for them to receive training? Is staff given opportunities to influence 16

decisions around what training will be provided? Are current training plans seen as effective in helping staff set and achieve career goals? It might be worthwhile to consider how your newsroom would answer questions such as these. The connection between training and change might seem obvious, but Dana Robbins, then-editor-in-chief of The Hamilton Spectator in Hamilton, Ont., Canada, Pilot No. 4, and now publisher of the The Guelph Mercury and The Record in Kitchenor, Ont., Canada, is clear on the point: “If you really do believe newsrooms need to reinvent themselves, and you don’t back that up with training, then it’s smoke and mirrors. You don’t really mean that newsrooms need to reinvent themselves because that’s how people reinvent themselves: with training and development.” An unfortunate limitation of the Learning Newsroom was that the initiative had to stop at the door of the newsroom. Even with such a generous grant from the Knight Foundation, there were limits on the number of people who could be trained. Ideally, everyone in the newspaper would be exposed to these concepts and tools. In about half of the pilots, progress has already begun toward that end, with the newsroom acting as just the first wave in the learning. Another constraint was that in the two largest newsrooms, in San Jose and Sarasota, budget and scheduling realities dictated capping training at 130 people, in newsrooms of, at the time of their entry into the program, 321 and 179, respectively. Both pilots, however, showed strong outcomes with such a large core group focused on the task. In all other newsrooms, the full newsroom took part.

Pick a route, any route … That’s the general outline of the Learning Newsroom’s approach. The pages that follow will detail much more thoroughly “the how,” and what came of the efforts. But whether other editors borrow this model or build their own (an Internet search will bring up hundreds of books on organizational change and a list of some of the best are included in the Tools section at the back of this book; likewise, experts in your own community can train in the topics we used), it’s worth applying some urgency to the job. Journalists know something radical needs to happen around the way newsrooms operate. From the start of the Learning Newsroom journey, it was apparent they don’t need any more “scare the kids” stories about the dire circumstances that await if newspapers are unable to find ways to regain lost audience. If the Impact Study results failed to sufficiently sound the alarm, industry news events since have. Throughout this project, editors were eager for a formula for change, and many among the frontline staff were at least open to the prospect of playing their part.

“If you really do believe newsrooms need to reinvent themselves, and you don’t back that up with training, then it’s smoke and mirrors.” DANA ROBBINS, then editor-in-chief of The Hamilton Spectator in Hamilton, Ont., Canada

“If we don’t figure out ways to do this better … we’ll be manufacturing buggy whips when the rest of the world is taking the space shuttle.” SUSAN RIFE, books editor, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Sarasota, Fla.

Susan Rife, books editor at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Fla., Pilot No. 10, and a mid-career journalist who was a leading voice for change on the Learning Newsroom steering committee there, speaks with as much fervor as any newspaper company CEO. “If we don’t figure out ways to do this better, to handle the challenges in this industry in a more effective way, there won’t be an industry left,” she said in an interview in November 2006, near the completion of her newsroom’s first year toward the effort. “It’ll be gone. We’ll be dinosaurs. We’ll be manufacturing buggy whips when the rest of the world is taking the space shuttle.” Speaking from an earlier point in her newspaper career, Kelly Kearsley, a 27-year-old reporter at The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., Pilot No. 8, doesn’t sound much different. “I think circulation numbers speak for themselves. I think we’re at a time in our industry where – particularly if you’re just getting a start in this industry and you love journalism and you love newspapers and you sit in your seat and you’re somewhat dismayed by what you read about our industry and you can’t bear to read one more story about how newspapers are dying – it’s nice to know someone’s out there trying to give you an answer, a solution. And I think this is part of it, being able to change, giving us a kind of a hope for the future that we can change, that newspapers will survive.” For those who would go this route, it’s important to note that it has no end point. The work gets easier as more people take up new levels of responsibility, habits change and expectations shift. But as Bob Zaltsberg of The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind., the editor with the most seniority in the Learning Newsroom program as Pilot No. 1, stresses often, there is no finish line. “I think it’s really important to participate in some sort of program that’s going to change the culture in the newsroom,” he said. “The Learning Newsroom has been the key for us. But it’s not a program that begins and ends. It’s a program that helps you look at what needs to be done in terms of changing the defensive culture into something more constructive and you need to work on that and keep it going.” The potential value of what could be learned through a project like the Learning Newsroom was clear to its designers at API, ASNE and Knight as long as four years ago. What they couldn’t have foreseen were the ways journalists in every pilot would hone and improve the process for the next, and on behalf of a broader audience of peers who might consider a similar effort. The partners likewise displayed generosity in wanting to see the lessons they learned – even the tough ones – shared for the benefit of other newsrooms. That type of selflessness is more proof still that ours is a craft worth saving.

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The real advantage of the Learning Newsroom is that it really forces you to look within yourself and figure out: Is this the newsroom we really want to be?”

Why bother trying to change your newsroom?

DONNA YANISH LOVELL, breaking news online editor and Learning Newsroom steering committee member, San Jose Mercury News. Pilot No. 9

There's no more important time to be considering a program like this. Newspapers face a great challenge in trying to figure out what the future is. And the more smart people in a room we can get engaged in trying to figure that out the better. Do it. Be brave.” KAREN PETERSON, managing editor, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Pilot No. 8.

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Other newsrooms HAVE to think about things like this. I just don’t think we can survive as a business if we pretend the answers come from the top of the organization because they just don’t.” DAVID ZEECK, executive editor, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Pilot No. 8.

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For me, it's an issue of survival that newspapers need to make changes beyond the cosmetic changes most people think of when they talk about change at a newspaper. We'll do a redesign. Cultural change takes a lot more commitment, takes a lot more patience, takes a lot more time. But we believe that we've seen clear evidence at Hamilton that those kinds of changes run much deeper and are much more sustainable for the readership than the older styles. ROGER GILLESPIE, managing editor, The Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton, Ont., Canada. Pilot No. 4.

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I would say unequivocally the top outcome for us is that the capacity within our newsroom has increased exponentially as part of this piece, and I can say as a manager and as a person who is in charge of signing invoices and doing budgets, I am endlessly amazed at how the capacity within our organization to generate news content has increased as a result of the cultural change that we've seen. I think the other thing though is the explosion of innovation that I see coming from my staff.”

What can come of this type of work?

DANA ROBBINS, then editor-in-chief, The Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton, Ont., Canada. Pilot No. 4.

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There're more people coming up saying ‘Well, here’s the problem, but here’s what I think we should do to fix it.’”

LIBBY AVERYT, editor and vice president, Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Corpus Christi, Texas. Pilot No. 6.

I think that it was a life-changing experience that has ruffled some feathers in our newsroom, but in the end I think that it will make, and has made, great changes.” BETHANY NOLAN, reporter and Learning Newsroom steering committee member, The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind. Pilot No. 1.

The single best outcome is truly that it has changed our culture. We have been involved with some very specific changes in how we're trying to appeal to younger readers and women readers. There has been a lot of discussion about doing enterprise and hard news in ways that we haven't before. And rather than those things being drawn up by management in some board room and then being dropped upon us, we have input and a role in forming those ideas and concepts.

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JOE DUGGAN, reporter and Learning Newsroom steering committee, Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Neb. Pilot No. 7.

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I think that we're a much better newspaper than we were 18 months ago. I think we're a better newsroom to work in. I think we're a better newspaper for our readers. I think I'm a better editor because of what I've learned from the people I work with. … We were doing the jobs that we all learned 10, 15, 20 years ago, about reporting the news and putting it in the paper. Now we're doing a better job, in a better atmosphere of teamwork, in terms of serving our readers.” BOB ZALTSBERG, editor, The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Ind. Pilot No. 1.

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What’s in it for those who matter most: readers?

We're seeing a lot more creativity bubbling up from the worker-bee level from people who maybe previously didn't feel empowered. I think what our readers are seeing is a more creative product, a product that reflects better levels of collaboration. SUSAN RIFE, books editor and Learning Newsroom steering committee member, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Sarasota, Fla. Pilot No. 10.

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Well, hopefully they will notice that maybe some of the stories they're seeing aren't what they expect. If you pick up your newspaper and it's what you expect every day then maybe it becomes dispensable. But if you're surprised and you're interested and you're finding things that maybe you didn't know you were interested in, then that keeps you reading. DAVID WICKERT, reporter and Learning Newsroom steering committee member, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Pilot No. 8.

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Some editors are championing change throughout the paper.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Bob Zaltsberg, The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana

t’s good to share. And the lessons of The Learning Newsroom – including the main one, that moving from a defensive to a constructive workplace culture is essential for our survival – apply well beyond the 10 newsrooms in the ASNE/API project. In fact, Publisher Mayer Maloney of The Herald-Times suggested a Learning Newspaper program would have been more valuable for the industry than limiting the efforts to the newsroom. The generous Knight Foundation grant was to be applied to newsrooms, though, and that’s how the project played out. Still, sharing the lessons with other departments at the newspaper and other newsrooms in a group will only make our companies and our industry stronger. Some of the Learning Newsroom editors have already set about that task – in our organizations and our ownership groups. But how do you share 1218 months of relatively expensive training in a two-hour PowerPoint or something similar? Although replicating the entire 22

Learning Newsroom program would be difficult if not impossible, there are ways to transfer the basics and plant hardy seeds of involvement and culture change. At The Hamilton Spectator, Managing Editor Roger Gillespie sees the Learning Newsroom project as “about education, involvement and the introduction of some measure of control for more people over their work.” He shares those concepts with other departments at his paper in a number of ways, he said. One example is work the newsroom did with the circulation department. “One of the first things was very simple. We got together managers from the two departments and they talked about what they did,” he said. “The next step was to do some simple newspaper problem-solving exercises with mixed groups from the two departments. One of the puzzles one group was asked to solve was: What’s the right response to a prospective subscriber who says they have no time to read? “Next, joint working groups can be set up to deal with joint issues. More formal sessions can be held where sen-

ior members of departments teach staff from other departments about the functions and issues facing them.” The key to all this knowledge transfer, Gillespie said, is “finding partners who believe that cultural change is not just possible but necessary.” Libby Averyt, editor of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, in Corpus Christi, Texas, has talked about the Learning Newsroom program with other managers at her newspaper. She has shared the need for culture change that is at the Learning Newsroom’s core and is heading a leadership training project for her paper’s parent company, E.W. Scripps Co. “It’s relatively abstract, I know, but the Learning Newsroom program has helped my staff enjoy their work more and feel better about their working environment,” she said. “Because the challenges in our industry are so immense these days, I think we must do everything possible to make sure our employees are in the right frame of mind and in the right supportive environment to do their absolute best and most innovative work. There are so many factors working against us right now, and I believe the true solution to surviving this transitional time lies with our people.” Sharing an outline for why culture change is needed and how to go about getting started is possible, too. Some of the messages of the Learning Newsroom can be delivered in a pretty tight package, as in a PowerPoint I developed to share with other newsrooms in our ownership group, Schurz Communications Inc. Here are some key concepts: Urgency. The Learning Newsroom is an effort to put journalists in position to lead the transition going on in our industry. The alternative is to remain defensive and refuse to change. Defending traditional principles around journalism is reasonable and even advisable, but not as an excuse for resisting innovation and new work requirements. Business literacy. The newsroom

needs to have much better understanding of the challenges facing the industry in general and other departments in your building in the specific. Communication. For culture to be constructive, more information must be shared more openly. Culture will remain defensive if information is tightly held by a few.

Systems and process analysis and time management. Tools here can help journalists make operational fixes, find efficiencies, become more organized and save time. It’s particularly important to determine what your newsroom can stop doing. Innovation. A key point here is that true innovation isn’t simply improving processes and the newspaper incrementally, but rather developing new products that may or may not have anything to do with what your newspaper has traditionally done. Training. The newsroom must be committed to strategic training, must put someone in charge of it, must require it, and must track it. It does wonders for individual staff members, for the enterprise and for the culture. It’s also important to stress that this is a program that doesn’t have an end. Just as individuals improve and mature, so can the newsroom culture – and the entire newspaper culture. In our newsroom, culture improvements must be nourished every day by renewed commitment of top managers. Consultant Pierre “Pete” Meyer, an industrial psychologist with more than 35 years of experience in the field, says true culture change takes three to five years. We shouldn’t expect it would take us any less. And the lessons are valid no matter how widespread. Each individual who grasps the concepts will help our newsroom improve; and if the newsroom improves and shares what we’ve learned with other departments, our entire organization will improve. Bob Zaltsberg is editor of The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind. E-mail: RZaltsberg@HeraldT.com 23

The newspaper industry often relies on shortcuts. Design elements, story approaches and “new products” are snatched up and mimicked daily. The Learning Newsroom offered no such roadmaps. This was an experiment in “discovery learning”: The learner is provided the tools and information to solve a problem or learn a concept — and then “makes sense” of them. It is a difficult but valuable route to new skills. As Pilot No. 1, the work was perhaps hardest for the staff in Bloomington.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Bethany Nolan, The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana

didn’t hesitate when first asked by Editor Bob Zaltsberg to serve on a new committee being formed at The Herald-Times. Sure, I said, I’ll do it. After all, in the past, such work had subsisted on a few quick meetings and a list of recommendations, and then it was on to the next task. That was my introduction to the steering committee for the Learning Newsroom project. Little did I know I was embarking on an 18-month journey without a roadmap. The H-T was the very first paper to participate in the pilot project, with

its goals of increasing training and changing newsroom culture. A perfectionist type who likes to have clear expectations in front of me before taking on any project, I was especially lost. What does a steering committee do? How often do we meet? Who, if anybody, is in charge? How do we get our fellow reporters and copy editors on board with the project? How do we communicate about what’s happening? And just what exactly are we trying to accomplish with this again anyway? Even when other papers came online, Project Director Vickey Williams wouldn’t share many details

At one of their first steering committee work sessions at The HeraldTimes, copy editor Penny Reid, columnist Mike Leonard, reporter Bethany Nolan and sportswriter Lynn Houser map strategy for following up on opportunities discussed during full-staff training sessions.

In a practice picked up by several other Learning Newsroom pilots, the steering committee at The Herald-Times used the office bulletin board to post meeting notes, agendas and subcommittee project invitations and updates. This method supplemented group e-mail. In some cases, intranet pages were set up to ensure everyone was kept abreast of progress and felt welcome to contribute. about their efforts in order to ensure each paper worked in what was essentially a vacuum – shifting and growing in ways unique to its organization without interference, so to speak, from the other participating sites. My fellow committee members and I even joked about it, giving Vickey the mad scientist role, each paper a Petri dish in her evil plan. She called it “discovery learning,” soothing our fears and praising our small forays in the right direction. Eventually, it all started to make a little bit of sense. There were subcommittees, which began important work on things like innovation and training. We got a training coordinator, Rod Spaw, who hit the ground running and created a fantastic training plan that left us all with our mouths hanging open. I began to hear the term “the Learning Newsroom” creeping into the speech of my fellow reporters as we talked about work issues. Of course, there were bumps along the way. The project’s “bottom up” philosophy sparked quite a discussion among reporters when manage25

ment gave us the opportunity to weigh in on a job proposal. And there were nay sayers. But, slowly, I started to relax. We hadn’t screwed up. All along, I’d been worried we would somehow fail at becoming a Learning Newsroom, never realizing it was the process that made us one. Bethany Nolan is a reporter and Learning Newsroom steering committee member for The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind. E-mail: BNolan@HeraldT.com

Emily Thickstun is at her third newspaper, just two years into the business. After six months at the H-T, she became a member of the Learning Newsroom steering committee, joining four other journalists with more than 75 years’ combined newspaper experience.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Emily Thickstun, The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana

represent a generation that isn’t satisfied with waiting its turn. If we want to get onboard this news revolution everyone’s buzzing about, we’d better get ahead of the train. On my first day at The HeraldTimes, training editor Rod Spaw welcomed me to the paper. He talked about the Learning Newsroom program and how, as one of the outcomes of the work, staff and management had made a commitment to an annual

mandatory minimum number of training hours per staffer. (It recently increased from 12 hours to 16 hours for 2007.) The H-T was just over a year into the program, and I heard Rod, and then other colleagues, using the phrase “in the spirit of the Learning Newsroom” as they broached alternative ways of doing things. I was convinced that in order to succeed I’d have to figure out what Rod meant.

“We communicate, we innovate, we collaborate,” said Emily Thickstun, a copy editor and reporter at The Herald-Times.

Little did I know, my colleagues hadn’t worked it all out either.

It’s not just a vocabulary, it’s a mindset. > We communicate. Everyone can weigh in on policy, front-page layout and our code of conduct. It’s expected. > We innovate. If something doesn’t work, say so. Then help fix it. Have a great idea? Don’t just sit on it, make it happen. > We collaborate.

Consistently committed to change. Many of my colleagues had clearly bought into the concepts. Our editor, Bob Zaltsberg, couldn’t stop talking about change and culture ... and changing culture. Copy chief J.J. Perry was begging me to challenge myself, to go beyond being a copy editor. It was further evidence things are different here. All that talk about paying dues? Not here. It takes a personal commitment. I learned later that not everyone fully buys into the talk about engaging the full staff in setting a path for the future, but I found a core group who did. Find yours. Run with it. We do our best work when we’re having fun. I knew I wasn’t going to woo the old sticks in the mud with promises of happier times ahead. They’ve heard that line, and it drove them deeper into the rut. We have to show results. For us, that’s increased circulation and bottom-up decision making.

Try, learn, share, repeat. At my first newspaper, I don’t recall ever hearing the word training. 27

There’s no way that company would have paid a short-timer’s way to a national copy editor conference. The H-T did. At the second paper, the business side of the operation was a mystery to the newsroom. Being mindful of the business operations bridges old-school journalism with the demands of the industry. How can we succeed if we’re not working together? When I see an empty paper box downtown, I call the circulation department. It makes sense. If we can become a Learning Newsroom, why not morph into a Learning Newspaper? Then I was tapped to be chairman of our steering committee. Why me? Why not? My learning curve was steep, trying to maneuver newsroom politics while planning productive weekly meetings and tackling innovation. Committees stalled, staff shifted. We rallied and tried new things, such as a committee overhaul spurred by the energy of new sports reporter Chris Korman. I swapped jobs with city reporter Sarah Morin. Now I’m one of three hybrid copy editor/ reporters. Sarah and I picked up technical skills. But more importantly, we learned the why’s of each others’ jobs. Then we took time to share with our colleagues what we learned so everyone could benefit.

What’s next? The Learning Newsroom is part of our culture. Will it be, as some veterans forewarn, another big idea that fades? Not if I can help it. Emily Thickstun is a copy editor, reporter and Learning Newsroom steering committee member for The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind. E-mail: EThickstun@HeraldT.com

Leadership requirements for newsroom change “Don’t kid yourself into believing that it’s simply a matter of saying ‘OK, now you guys have the control.’ It’s more complicated than that.” DANA ROBBINS, then editor-in-chief,The Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton, Ont., Canada

ewspapers are receiving entreaties to change nearly every day. One of the more balanced came in the form of a piece by the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. The professors took up the Knight Ridder sale as an occasion to offer suggestions in an article titled “All The News That’s Fit to … Aggregate, Download, Blog: Are Newspapers Yesterday’s News?” “So, what is the industry to do going forward? Faculty members offer the following advice to newspapers struggling in an uncertain environment: Papers are not going to disappear, but executives must recognize that the fat and happy days are gone; in stock-market terminology, don’t fight the tape. More than ever, think smaller staffs, local coverage and, perhaps most important, younger readers. Don’t dumb down, but take the needs of your readers into account much more than you ever have in deciding what makes a story. Accept cultural change in the newsroom; the role of the editor as allpowerful intermediary is waning in the eyes of Internetsavvy readers. Think multiple distribution channels; cyberspace is as much a friend as a competitor. Recognize that the reader’s time is valuable but also remember that analysis and narrative storytelling – not just facts and figures – remain in demand.” Many might consider this a reasonable prescription. So where’s an editor to start? And with yet another allusion to “allpowerful” grips on authority, must the journey begin with allowing oneself to be wrestled to the floor of the newsroom?

Staff at The Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., brainstorm next steps after a Learning Newsroom training session.

It would be unfair to stereotype the journalist at the top as the villain. The hierarchical system that exists in newsrooms today is there because it worked, not because of evil personalities. In the days when readership was nearly automatic and advertising profits high, the machine that is newspapering ran just fine with responsibility for idea generation and decision-making concentrated at the top. Even a decade ago, the next hero leader – with every attribute the title implies – was much-sought-after by executive search firms looking to fill the corner offices in newsrooms. Only when news consumers and advertisers began to signal they could see a future where the daily paper was no longer essential did the model’s flaws become evident. So the challenge today is to envision a management structure where a hero’s independence is still valued – for obvious journalistic reasons – but where a new premium is placed on engaging more voices and trying new ideas in order to strengthen connections with consumers and communities. Early in the process of evaluating Learning Newsroom candidates, significant time was spent with top leaders talking about their role in change. Lessons from other industries that have successfully remade themselves in the face of declining demand provided clear marching orders: The work had to begin with tackling top-down styles that leave people feeling as if they have little stake in the organization’s future. Every editor whose newsroom made it into the program said he or she wanted a workplace where ideas flowed more freely from frontline staff and people felt more engaged. But that was just a starting point. Dana Robbins, who has nearly half a decade of war stories around what it takes to engage a newsroom in successful innovation, speaks with authority from his experiences prior to and including the Learning Newsroom work at The Hamilton Spectator: “To say that you don’t want a hierarchal, top-down situation is such an easy thing to say. It’s almost motherhood. And quite honestly most managers who are thinking would just take it that it’s a given, that of course we don’t want that. To actually do it? It’s tough. It is really tough. It requires a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of shoulders against the wheel. ... To actually drive decision-making down into the organization is a difficult piece. It’s hugely rewarding, it’s the right way, it’s absolutely the right way to go. But don’t kid yourself into believing that it’s simply a matter of saying ‘OK, now you guys have the control.’ It’s more complicated than that. And it takes a lot of work and a lot of finessing and a lot of managing. And you should also expect to break a few teeth and stub a few toes. It’s difficult stuff.” The dozens of editors who inquired into the Learning Newsroom had different motivations for considering the partnership. Some saw it as free training. Some may have viewed it as a way to increase their personal stock – with a publisher who subscribes to organizational development concepts or as a resume line toward a better job. Those who had given it the least advance thought might even have viewed it is as a way to get staff to do more of what they wanted, or a way to force out some “lazy” veterans or let younger staff shine, not realizing that change is required of everyone. The leaders of the 10 newsrooms accepted as final pilots proved to be well-equipped for the challenge. But none were fully prepared for the difficulty of the assignment. For the facilitator, this work meant watching an elaborate dance. At the start of the effort, staff looks with skepticism at the invitation to change. As 30

weeks pass, this turns to intrigue and a testing of the waters. If you want my ideas, how big is too big? Answers here were crucial. Where one editor responded, “Think edible newsprint,” staff went away with a clear charge to think big. The months ahead yielded spectacular results in that newsroom. Where another said, “Concentrate on small wins,” it was hard to get to more than that. Leaders must be prepared to encourage staff to reach for the stars. Another conclusion based on observing 10 change efforts in newsrooms: If you can convince staff to engage in a venture around change, the process will most certainly begin with them telling you what’s wrong with life there now. Thankfully, this phase need not last too long. But whatever the duration, leadership can expect some painful feedback on what’s broken. And with journalists doing the talking, the messages will be straightforward or even harsh. Leaders can expect to see the explanation for at least some flaws in the operation or excuses for “doing things the same way we always have” delivered right back to their office door. In other words: “Our hurdle is the editor.” The classic alpha editor may have difficulty with this feedback but can make the progression if willing to engage in some introspection and self-control. For example, prior to the first group training, when survey results invariably include criticism of current operations, editors were coached to restrain their reactions. The goal was to engage the room in a discussion of the staff’s perceptions and not to stifle the conversation by provoking fears of retribution. Editors were told: “Even if you hear a statement of ‘policy’ that is inaccurate, don’t immediately correct the speaker. Watch your body language. Don’t whip around in your chair to see who made the comment.” In one session, a publisher rocked back and forth, literally sitting on his hands in order to keep himself quiet. At the end of the session, there was time for clarification or correction of misunderstandings of the leader’s intent. In the months that followed, a lesser response might have been that of the editor who constantly met the steering committee’s proposals for change with the question, “Whose idea was that?” before considering its validity. Later still and where the most progress was made, editors showed great finesse in evaluating even far-fetched suggestions gently to preserve good will. The Learning Newsroom program in no way sought to change leadership structure, though a few staffers in every audience might have wanted to interpret it that way. The intent from the start, stated repeatedly throughout the project team’s interactions with staff: “This is not about creating a democracy. Management is still management.” Certainly not every idea put forward was a good idea, and it was the leader’s responsibility to make the call on those most worth testing. So what might a happy balance look like, to engage staff but still be crystal clear that managers were still responsible for doing their jobs? Management styles evolved over the course of the project. Where under harsher styles the rejection of an idea might have been translated by the person making the suggestion as “Your idea is wrong,” editors learned to be more specific in their feedback. To a twenty-something copy editor, there is a big difference between outright rejection and hearing an editor say: “Make the business case on why your plan is better than the way we do things now,” or “To convince me to try that, you’ll need to show these results are likely,” stating a few concrete conditions. To be fair, the staff was evolving on a similar track. Each training session promoted a greater personal responsibility among the rank and file in a host of areas – for communicating in more straightforward, grownup ways and for one’s own happiness and satisfaction in the work life, to name two. With both sides making an earnest effort, progress could be seen quickly. Early into the program, staffers began using the phrase “In the spirit of the Learning 31

Newsroom …” to start conversations with managers. Sometimes it introduced a gripe, sometimes it was used as a gentle reminder to persuade a news editor to let the copy desk offer input before posting a new work schedule. Sometimes it was voiced with complete ridicule. Facilitators didn’t care because it signaled things were beginning to change. It only makes sense that work such as this will repeatedly coalesce on the styles of the top leader. A side benefit of the Learning Newsroom was that the project’s two organizational development consultants each have significant experience as executive coaches. Though it was not a part of the formal outline for the program, each generously made his or her time available to any editor who wanted one-on-one counsel. Those who did saw benefits. Some sought feedback from the project director. Others clearly had a trusted inner circle with their top lieutenants and felt free to ask, “Was I wrong on that?” Having a yearlong calendar of public sessions where change was the top item on the agenda provided lots of opportunities for practicing more constructive ways of communicating for both management and frontline staff. Another key lesson was that every editor in a top leadership position in the pilots – assistant managing editor level and above – had to come to own these concepts at their own pace and under their own terms. For one leader, a significant personal change might have come when she saw the work could further a personal commitment to watchdog or enterprise reporting. For another, it might have been when it became clear it could lead to new products (and new revenue streams). The scenario most to be hoped for is when the editor can recognize that more ideas simply mean more opportunities. In today’s newsrooms, that would be a happy prospect. Frankly, there were different degrees of letting go exhibited by senior leaders in the pilots, at least at the start. Some wholeheartedly said early on, “Your ideas are as good as mine and I want to hear them.” Others were more tentative and saw slower starts as staff continued to look for signals that a new way of doing things really would be OK. The more explicit a senior leader was willing to be with a) an invitation for wholesale change and b) a stated willingness to review operations and practices top to bottom – with no pet projects as exclusions – the greater the return on the investment. If the group feels the work will be shaped to the leader’s preferences, it will be translated as using them to maintain the status quo. And why expend energy on that? At this point, some elaboration on the Learning Newsroom program setup is due. The previous chapter outlined the project’s approach and the considerations of applicant newsrooms’ commitment to staff training and efforts at readership growth. We also discussed with each applicant editor his or her relationship with the publisher and other department heads, knowing that if radical change were really the aim, those leaders would also have to support the mission. Time was set aside during the introductory visits to meet these leaders and lay out goals. In the end the publisher and non-news department heads in every pilot proved eager to help and played key roles in leading the training in

“Just have a thick skin and let the things get out that may make you feel uncomfortable. That’s how you move forward.” JON DEVRIES, readership editor, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

the business literacy segment as well as encouraging the work in numerous other ways.

We also asked editors for the following: Time. For the training classes and for the Learning Newsroom steering committee work. This was a significant investment because each of the five training modules was presented to the full staff (over the course of two days) in classes of four hours. The training calendar around the partnership had to be set months in advance to allow for planning. This program delivered 20 hours of training per staffer in each pilot over the course of a year, which sounds formidable except when applied against the mission: remaking the newsroom and unleashing the potential of everyone who works there. Additionally, a specially selected steering committee of frontline staff in every newsroom had to be given time to find applications for the new tools and skill sets they were learning. The smallest committee was four, the largest 13; and each committee spun off a portion of the workload to subcommittees or single-topic task forces. At the start, steering committees routinely met once a week, generally for an hour to 90 minutes. At other points in the year they came together with less frequency. In a related vein, top leadership must be prepared to carve out time in their own calendars to handle an increased level of conversation around change. Ideas begin to come quickly when the work takes off. Editors need to realize there are three fair responses to a suggestion: Yes, no or “I need more information in order to make a decision.” Everyone can recall times where a suggestion led to a study group, which after some months yielded a report, which then sat on the corner of the editor’s desk gathering dust, leaving staff frustrated at the inaction. This wasn’t that type of initiative and would have quickly failed if the pace proved so slow. Sincere commitment to changed practices. The newsroom will detect insincerity or queasiness quickly. Starting the process and halting it because it is a bigger prospect than one first imagined will leave the newsroom in a more defensive state than when it began, organizational development experts warn. Also, where newsrooms made their greatest strides, there was a single, discernable champion for the work – either the executive editor or the managing editor. This was of greater value than a message of general support from the leadership team. Project updates can be made to a team of senior managers. Still, one leader must stand out as having the role of shepherding the initiative day to day. Encouragement. Particularly for the steering committee members, who do the heaviest lifting in this program, having to endure the frustration of management when things don’t seem to move quickly enough and the ridicule of their more skeptical peers who label them naïve in their enthusiasm. Editors worked hard to say “yes” to the earliest ideas to give fledgling committees some early wins. This helped turn heads with larger segments of staff and gained momentum for the work. Most anything reasonable can at least be tried as a pilot. And the first suggestions tend to be rather timid anyway as staff continues to look for proof that the invitation for change is sincere. Editors also acknowledged withholding rejection of some ideas they didn’t put much stock in. Instead of saying, “No thanks,” they said, “Prove your case.” To their delight, when allowed to cook a while among staff newly focused on making the business case for their suggestions, many became very successful projects. 33

Patience. Especially in letting the committee find a voice of its own, learn how to organize time, manage meetings, set priorities and build consensus. In short, the committee’s mission was to start conversations around change. Doing so effectively meant having to master skills leaders learned long ago in their careers, including the ability to overcome failure when an idea occasionally went bust. Editors find it hard to watch these growing pains, but in the pursuit of a bottom-up workplace, they were asked to essentially take a passive role, to stand back and await the delivery of suggested fixes and new ideas. The tactic proved smart. Beyond facilitating some fine outcomes and greater engagement of the staff as a whole, the committee itself can come to represent a new crop of leadership candidates and a slice of the workforce population with a greater empathy for what it means to be a manager. (See page 102 for steering committee “Rules of the Road.”) Help manage mid-level editors through the effort. Any book on the topic of organizational change or change theory will address the difficulty of engaging middle managers in these types of ventures. Top leaders and front-line employees are quicker to see the potential benefit from change initiatives than the people whose job it is to keep the trains running on time around them. Middle managers have the hardest jobs in any organization, and in newsrooms, partially because of this industry’s history of insufficient investment in training and development, their stress levels today are at what many believe a crisis stage. While top leaders and appointed delegations from the rank and file may have time to squander in idea sessions, middle managers rebel at the suggestion of spending even a few precious hours in any endeavor that could sacrifice the quality of tomorrow’s newspaper or making deadline. Their focus is necessarily on bottom-line issues of production, and many fear losing what little authority or control they have worked so hard to earn. (In one pilot the city editor told her senior editor, “It’s my job to give you ideas on what should change.”) Not one pilot would have launched if the decision had been left to a vote of middle managers. Yet their buy-in is essential. In some places we won it, in some we didn’t.

Our dilemma in the middle One element in our model for change made it even more difficult to win the support of middle managers. As part of our approach, we asked that managers not serve on the Learning Newsroom steering committees for the first six months of the change effort. Formal membership on the committees for that time window was the only concession we asked. Middle managers were included in the training sessions and took key roles in leading conversations in exercises meant to build new skill sets around change. Ground rules stipulating the steering committee work in total transparency dictated managers were welcome at any meeting. Managers were provided – along with the rest of staff – minutes of every session. Committee members gave their supervisors advance notice when the Learning Newsroom work would require their time so consideration could be made around assignments. Governing the early influence of middle managers was necessary in order to convince the majority of staff that this drive for a more bottom-up work environment was worth the investment of their effort. This concession – along with the yearlong commitment and a promise that management would respond honestly and quickly to suggestions for change – were among the structural elements that distinguished the Learning Newsroom from previous 34

“Pretend this is ‘Survivor.’ We’re only asking you to stand at the edge of the clearing for a few months and let them discover how to make fire.” VICKEY WILLIAMS

change efforts. With “getting multiple levels of signoff for the smallest change to occur” showing up in advance surveys as a frustration of every staff, our efforts were doomed unless we could show ideas that came of this initiative would be treated differently. Most steering committee members endorsed the decision to ask middle managers to play supporting rather than directing roles for the first few months of the program. “Otherwise, it would have been ‘life as usual’ in our work sessions,” one said. Reporters, graphic artists, photographers and copy editors would have consciously or unconsciously looked for signals from the titled leader in the room for his or her reception to every idea, our change experts warned. Managers are managers because they have exhibited leadership ability. And even with the most careful middle managers, their presence alone would have influenced the process prematurely. This proved to be the most sensitive area of the partnership and an area where project facilitators invested a great deal of conversation and concern. Some pilots found ways to get past the rub through an intervention by the top leader. (One called a meeting of middle managers and asked essentially, “What do you not understand about my commitment to this work? Get on board.”) In others, after a few months the middle managers began to see results of the committees’ work, felt empathy with the difficulty of their path and offered to help. In several, the committees structured a process for the development of their ideas that included a stage for pitching an idea to middle managers before it went to the top leaders, so when time came for the final dog and pony show, they could make a case with evidence of strong buy-in. In possibly the worst instance of behavior, in one of the newsrooms two department heads rejected direct appeals by committee members for feedback a few months into their work. One told the committee, in essence, “You didn’t need my help before, I’m not giving it to you now.” Another reportedly said, “You don’t have the authority to make me help you.” In the later pilots, we anticipated the reaction and program facilitators appealed to middle managers directly to try to get past any inclination to see the condition around early steering committee membership as an insult. It helped to compare the process to one of the reality television shows: “Pretend this is ‘Survivor,’” the program director told one newsroom. “We’re only asking you to stand at the edge of the clearing for a few months and let them discover how to make fire.” In a few pilots, the rule caused no consternation whatsoever. In most, the majority of middle managers eventually got past any ruffled feathers – as evidenced both anecdotally in new products or improved operations and in the hard data of the formal surveys. They eventually bought into changing their environment with as much or nearly as much fervor as frontline staff. In a cou35

ple, whether unable to get past an objection to the early committee setup or for other reasons, middle managers never bought into the concepts and continue to resist the change occurring around them. The steering committee at the San Jose Mercury News, already mentioned as having shown remarkable outcomes in this work, simply recruited two managers for their panel as soon as they reached the mid-year point, increasing in size from 12 to 14 members. Others seemed to work managers onto the committee at about the one-year point, as original committee members segued off the board and replacements were recruited for year two.

Other ways top leaders can help keep the work on track Editors were warned their help might be required in dispelling the false perception that the concepts of organizational change are a threat to, or unimportant to, investigative reporters and other “Capital J” journalists, who from the start proved eager to react negatively to all things that even smell of the word culture. They seemed certain the project was a second wave attempt at “dumbing down” the news in the wake of the Readership Institute’s Impact Study messages of a few years prior. During final visits to several pilots, the project team heard apologies from a few for their misplaced suspicions. There were other myths around the project’s intentions, including that the real goal was to pit younger staff against older staff. This was centered on data gained through this project that indicates staff age 29 and below seem at risk of leaving the industry specifically because in their eyes, newspapers are not responding quickly enough to the need for change. (See page 126 for more on this troubling finding.) That data was often attacked by veterans who were sure it was false, and if it were true, good riddance to the wimps who would leave. Early in the process in one newsroom, a member of the Newspaper Guild questioned whether the Learning Newsroom represented an alternative model to a union newsroom. (About half of the pilots have union representation in the newsrooms.) Other Guild members quickly pointed out the potential benefits for frontline staff of a more bottom-up work environment would seem to outweigh her concern. Resistance can take many forms, and all of the above could have been predicted. The good news is that because the pilots delivered significant outcomes even after weathering controversies and inaccuracies such as these, it appears that change can occur in almost any environment where leaders have the drive to see it through. Editors often ask if the Learning Newsroom approach would work in a small newsroom, a large newsroom, a newsroom of this or that ownership group. Should such work be tackled in a year when the calendar seems relatively clear? Can it go on in tandem with other major initiatives? Sometimes it is a department head whose eyes brighten at the prospect of a more inclusive, collaborative work environment, but who fears the top leader won’t go for a deep dive toward change. This work demonstrates that concentrating energy around change is worth the effort, as soon as possible, whatever the environment. “There will never be a perfect time,” consultant Toni Antonellis said many times. There will always be some who can look at the outcomes of this project and say, “It couldn’t happen at my place.” At least half of the pilots had to weather negative impacts related to the industry’s economic difficulties during the Learning Newsroom partnership. Notices of budget cuts, staff reductions or a 36

smaller newshole, unfortunately, seem likely to continue. These events are always a blow to staff morale and can slow progress, but the pilot newsrooms always seemed to pick themselves back up and find ways to refocus on work that, if successful, might offer them a stronger stance against such blows in the future. Editors considering a change effort also have to be prepared to clarify their vision and goals for the newsroom and the goals of the overall organization. It was a fundamental promise of the Learning Newsroom formula that frontline staff gain more knowledge around their organization’s plan to secure its future. This is necessary for individual employees to see how their roles fit in with those plans. Our route started with increasing the newsroom’s knowledge of the business operations of the organization. It was the business literacy training session in this program that many editors point to as an early turning point for increasing the level of conversation in their newsrooms around change. To the job of breaking the command and control styles traditional to most newsrooms, it seems what is needed, in short, is less direction but more leadership.

It’s not all about you Even though messages around change may seem at first glance to overly focus on leaders, advance surveys in every Learning Newsroom pilot signaled journalists are equally uncomfortable with the styles of those farther down the authority ladder, including some of their peers. In fact, the top items on journalists’ wish lists for improving their workplace, as listed below, seem to constitute a rather holistic view of the need for new ways of doing things.

> An environment that supports risk-taking > More frequent interaction with senior editors > Greater transparency around decisions > Less influence by a few strong personalities; more collaboration > No silos (less turf consideration, a lessening of the word people vs. visual people divide, more assignments across departments, more cross-departmental readership initiatives) > Greater accountability for those not pulling with the team Perhaps a broader view of the issues slowing down newsrooms today – and everyone’s role in the needed remedies – can be had gained by considering “the changing social contract,” to borrow a term from the organizational development experts. Consider the social contract to be that unwritten set of expectations each of us had on day one going into a newsroom. The picture of what success looked like for an individual starting in the business a few decades ago is much different from the revised definition needed today. Training partner Pierre “Pete” Meyer, an industrial psychologist with more than 35 years experience across many industries including numerous news organizations, offered a scenario that resonated with the Learning Newsroom pilots. In the old world, he said, the expectation was: Produce and you will be left alone. If that meant a star reporter was also a jerk – ignoring deadlines, being uncooperative on assigning art, and otherwise being disrespectful of one’s colleagues – it was accepted. In this type of environment, employees are left questioning, skeptical and independent. Leaders decide, tell and assign. The rank and file look for flaws and errors. Today, declining readership and competition with other media for the news consumer’s attention require collaboration and teamwork. Employees at 37

every level must become candid, transparent and interdependent. Leaders coach, advise and approve while “partners” on the frontlines seek change and innovation.

Voices of experience Three symposia for Learning Newsrooms were held at the American Press Institute’s facilities in Reston, Va., as groups of pilots ended their first year of efforts to equip journalists to better adapt to the change occurring in their marketplaces. These events provided opportunities for each pilot’s editor and a representative of each steering committee to come together and share experiences. In group conversations and videotaped interviews, their comments constitute a wealth of hard-won wisdom for other editors who would undertake similar drives in their newsrooms. Bob Zaltsberg, editor of The Herald-Times, said he came to understand that an essential first step for editors is explaining why change is necessary. “That’s something that we haven’t always been that good at, but I think we need to continually show people what our competition is, what the future looks like, in terms of at least what the best prognosticators say our future looks like. Convincing people that change is necessary if we’re going to succeed is the No. 1 priority in terms of trying to overcome this resistance that we have.” However, it’s unrealistic to hope for 100 percent buy-in. In every newsroom, even after a year of training, hard work by frontline staffers that yielded significant outcomes and leaders who were willing to change practices, some hard-line resistance remained. “There are some people who prefer to do the job the way they’ve always done it and I think you’re going to get that in every organization,” Zaltsberg said. The Hamilton Spectator Managing Editor Roger Gillespie urged colleagues to be prepared to hear tough messages and to recognize that wholesale change can take years. “Well, it’s not for the faint of heart,” he said. “You have to be committed to being open with your newsroom. You have to be committed to hearing things you don’t want to hear. Some of them will actually be true. And you have to be willing to make as much change as you expect your newsroom to change.” Jon DeVries, readership editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, took up both the topics of resistance and tough messages. “There are just some people who don’t believe there’s a crisis out there and the urgency for change, so we’ve tried to show the numbers that aren’t so rosy and even in our market, which has been insulated, generally, it’s coming home. Certainly the Readership Institute’s work has shown who’s reading and who’s not reading and what you have to do to get them.” Building a broader base of knowledge on business realities will persuade many to take up the cause of change, especially when doing so can provide a personal benefit such as increased job security, sponsoring editors agreed. Recognizing would-be partners and not wasting energy on the hardest cases become a necessity. “There are a certain number of people who will never change,” DeVries said, “and you just can’t waste your time trying to convert them. It’s the ones who are on the border that you want to push forward in the maybe category, and then push the maybes into the OKs and then the OKs into your champions. Some people are never going to change; it’s the others that you want to encourage along that continuum.” As for advice to other editors: “I would tell them bite your tongues,” 38

“As we got three months, six months, eight months, 10 months into it, we began to fully realize and appreciate just exactly how difficult it was to change and how long it would take to make that change.” ROGER GILLESPIE, managing editor, The Hamilton Spectator

DeVries said. “Listen. Let people say their piece. There’s going to be a lot of negative things that come out. “Let the people say what they want to say because once you get those issues out on the table you can get at the root issues that are affecting your newsroom,” he added. “So just have a thick skin and let the things get out that may make you feel uncomfortable. That’s how you move forward.” Kathleen Rutledge, editor of the Lincoln Journal Star, was succinct: “I would say that they should embrace it but be prepared for some uncomfortable moments that will bring growth to their newsroom.” Recognizing the magnitude of the job of breaking old habits is another necessary starting point. “We accepted, I guess as an article of faith, when we went into this that this would be something that would take a long time,” Gillespie said. “As we got three months, six months, eight months, 10 months into it, we began to fully realize and appreciate just exactly how difficult it was to change and how long it would take to make that change. But the change that we have seen, the kinds of commitment we’ve seen from people across the newsroom to a new way of doing work in the newsroom is reassurance that it’s the right direction.” Nick Pappas, editor of The Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., leads the smallest Learning Newsroom, Pilot No. 2. Having seen the kinds of payoffs Gillespie describes is sufficient to have him keeping an eye on himself to be sure he doesn’t revert to less-inclusive styles, Pappas said. “I feel myself sometimes just getting back into management mode and trying to make lists and send e-mails out, and I’ve gotten better at kind of stopping myself. … I might’ve gotten a little better at not feeling that everything that we do has to be decided by me and just giving people the opportunity to get their ideas out and to try different things and to be a little bit more innovative and, yeah, maybe fail a few times.” The ability to fail without fearing the sky will fall is a particularly important lesson for the steering committee, Pappas notes. “They’re going to have missteps and they may have mistakes and they may need to be steered a little bit from time to time, but they have to develop a voice. … So be there for them, support them, make it clear to them that this is important to you and that the success of the program is important and that if they have any questions they can come to you and ask your advice. But stay back and give them an opportunity to figure out where they want to go and what they want to do.” Like Pappas, Libby Averyt, editor of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, talks about the need for editors to constantly check their own behavior. She goes further, speculating some editors will be unwilling to do so. “You have to be wiling to share knowledge,” Averyt said, “and a lot of 39

managers as they go up the chain, they start to hang on to knowledge and they don’t want to share it, I guess for fear that they may not be so essential. “You have to know that you’re the kind of person who can share the responsibility and share the power, if you will, and realize that you may not always have the right answers; that there are people at all levels in the newsroom who may have really good ideas that you need to listen to. For me, I don’t think this program is for everybody. I wish it were for everybody because I think that newspapers and journalism would benefit, but it takes ... the right kind of manager who may realize that the old way of doing things is not working anymore.” Every Learning Newsroom editor can list unforeseen outcomes. Bob Gabordi, who was editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times in Asheville, N.C., during its initial year as Learning Newsroom Pilot No. 3 and is now executive editor of The Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee, Fla., cited one that is very personal. “What I said to the newsroom at the close of our last session was that the thing that surprised me the most was myself. How my management style probably changed a little bit, how I went from thinking that I had to be alone as the leader to feeling like I had 70 partners throughout the room and that was a stark difference.” Gabordi can recall old practices that didn’t facilitate innovation. After a year of effort at change, he and his management team no longer hovered over every detail. “I personally was able to give up being the one that had to decide everything, and in a very real way I’ve delegated more work, but more importantly, empowered more people to think. So I’ve given up a lot of the detail kinds of things that I just thought were so essential that the editor had to decide, and I’m finding not only do I not have to decide it, but I’m getting better outcomes when I don’t decide it.”

“I might’ve gotten a little better at not feeling that everything that we do has to be decided by me and just giving people the opportunity to get their ideas out and to try different things and to be a little bit more innovative and, yeah, maybe fail a few times.” NICK PAPPAS is editor of The Telegraph

The News Tribune Managing Editor Karen Peterson recalled what it was like to watch her newsroom – including middle managers – warm to the process. “There was skepticism at the beginning, and I think we got over that by just letting it run, by letting the steering committee have their head a little bit and begin to organize themselves and come up with ideas. Middle managers took a little coaching to get through the process. Coaching them at first to keep their hands off and let the staff build this thing. ... To ask them to step back and let the staff take a lead role in this process and then at some point to join back in and be a part of the process. And frankly that was as much of a challenge as keeping them out of it in the first place. They got very good at letting the steering committee go and there came a point where the steering committee really wanted to get the managers involved again so they could make things happen.” The only real justification for tackling an endeavor this difficult and time-consuming is the belief that it will make the newspaper a better product that readers will find valuable. DeVries, the readership editor in Sarasota, made the connection between culture change and growing readership. “We’ve got to engage the entire newsroom in this process,” he said at the final symposium in November 2006. “We can’t keep focusing on the same group we’re getting now. We’ve got to get the people who are not reading the paper. And to do that we need the variety and the diversity in the newsroom to come through in all the decision-making. We’ve got to be making better decisions about stories and photos and play and headlines and what we’re covering and what we’re not covering. And to do that you need everyone’s input.” Robbins of The Hamilton Spectator made the same link before submitting his paper’s application for the program. “Being interested in the Learning Newsroom was very easy,” he said. “We were very jazzed by the whole notion of cultural change and building the capacity within newsrooms to move forward. So when the opportunity for the Learning Newsroom came up, it was absolutely a no-brainer for us. We wanted to be a part of this project. What did we want to accomplish with this? We wanted to reinvent ourselves. And I think more importantly we wanted to create a capacity within our organization to be able to continue to reinvent ourselves because we don’t see this as simply moving from one place to another. It’s about building a culture that will allow us to keep moving forward year after year after year. “I don’t think that there is anything in the newspaper industry that is more important than reinvention,” Robbins added. “Sadly, it’s probably the thing that we’re least equipped to do.”

“Stifling my controlling ways” led to a more confident staff, big ideas of benefit to readers.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Kathleen Rutledge, Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Nebraska

ickey Williams said it would be the hardest thing I’d ever done. I nodded soberly and took a sip of my beer at a high-topped table in a D.C. bar. How hard could it be, really, to join this Learning Newsroom project? I’d covered politics. I’d survived the mashup of one newsroom with another. I’d made the transition from fellow newsroom cynic to boss, from reporter on the run to manager always in a meeting. So, sure, sign me up for The Learning Newsroom. A few weeks later, I was convinced I’d found the hardest-thing-I’d-everdone part. It was the application. Seemed about 40 pages long. I’d rather be putting out a newspaper. My trials soon gave way to headier stuff. Big-time consultants wheeled in to equip us with the skills to save our industry. My publisher thought it was pretty cool. A rush of people volunteered for the steering committee. Vickey and I had a tough time narrowing the list to nine. The nine set about creating other committees. Oh, happy innovation!

Then came the truly hardest thing I’d ever done. These new newsroom committees, safe in the shelter of Vickey’s care, started coming up with pesky ideas. The grin began to stiffen on the face of this enlightened editor whose boss thought she was rafting on the whitewater of change, the wind in her hair. Idea: Build a fitness center in the basement. Never mind that we already offer discounts to the YMCA one block away.

Idea: Curb favoritism in the newsroom. That, I thought to myself, is an old problem we fixed one city editor back. Idea: Suspend the accuracy initiative so staffers don’t feel intimidated. Might as well create a California SelfEsteem Commission while you’re at it, my evil twin muttered. Idea: Check the men’s bathroom heat vent for mold. Another industrysaving initiative. I was impatient with ideas I thought were petty. I found myself 42

talking too much and too urgently at steering committee meetings. I was grouchy. I was losing control and it didn’t feel good. I have found I’m not the only editor who has struggled with this. “Letting go requires a leap of faith, faith that those around you have something meaningful – perhaps even unique and special – to bring to the table,” said Dana Robbins, then editor of The Hamilton Spectator. “It sends a powerful and liberating message to the newsroom: namely that we’re all in this together and that we are equal to the task.” Robbins went on to become publisher at The Record and The Guelph Mercury in Kitchener, Ont., Canada, but while he was in Hamilton, his staff made some innovative leaps,

before and since testing the Learning Newsroom curriculum for change. He urged them on and let them go. “For any leader, letting go requires high degrees of self-awareness, confidence and courage,” he said. “It’s your way of publicly declaring, ‘I don’t have all the answers. And I’m probably not even the smartest person in the room. But I do know this team is up to the challenge.’” Robbins has a warning, too, for those who love control: “Editors who don’t take the leap are telescoping a highly corrosive, demotivating assessment of their team.” I didn’t want to be telescoping any corrosive messages to the Lincoln staff, so I dug deep into my bag of courage. I gradually forced myself to agree to ideas whose wisdom wasn’t

The Journal Star’s steering committee polishes its pitches for some new feature fronts aimed at younger readers.

readily apparent to me. Maybe Vickey helped a little here.

OK: I’ll suspend the punitive part of the accuracy initiative. I’ll let a staff committee take over the almighty spreadsheet of errors and help their peers avoid errors.

OK: I’ll ask for a cleaning of the bathroom vent. OK: I’ll accept a statement urging editors not to play favorites. Maybe if they can get a win on this one, they can go on to other ideas. Oops, the editors’ team reacts in full defensive bay. Smooth feathers, smooth feathers. By now, it was deep winter. I wondered if the Learning Newsroom would founder like a rear-wheel-drive car in a Nebraska snowdrift. The committees kept working hard, very hard. I kept stifling my controlling ways. Things began to take shape. My publisher read the financial tea leaves and asked me to cut some newshole. Rather than huddle in a small room with a few close advisers to decide where to cut, I asked the Learning Newsroom for help. In the old days, this might have led to a lot of grumbling about bean counters. In this new day, staffers contributed some workable ideas. We were able to cut half a dozen pages of newshole per week with little trauma to staff or to readers.

experience for the lucky few.

Big idea: Do away with themes for features sections. Bad, bad idea, I thought. I had been around when they were themed and had seen the bump in reader satisfaction that followed. I reluctantly, painfully agreed to detheme sections on two weekdays, named a guiding coalition to make it happen and let them go. A major change was happening without my dogging every step. What terror. What freedom. Result: The (402) section on Tuesdays and Thursdays to serve readers under 40. It’s a hit. A friend’s teen-age daughter called out one morning to her mother over breakfast, “Mom, there’s something in the paper for me!” In this Learning Newsroom, the confidence grows and the ideas keep coming: Goose enterprise reporting. Start the newsroom humming earlier in the morning. Equip us with technology to do our jobs in the new digital world. Redesign the paper. All because I got grouchy, let loose my bony grip and got out of the way. Kathleen Rutledge is editor of the Lincoln Journal Star in Lincoln, Neb. E-mail: Kathy.Rutledge@lee.net.

Idea: Create a new Monday feature called Long Story Short. I was nervous that this might mean a retreat from stories about ordinary people. I stifled myself. The plan was excellent. Do it, I said. And they did. It worked, beautifully. Idea: Give us one-third of the training budget to program. You’ve got it, I said. They delivered a nice mix of imported and local talent, making training more of a commonplace occurrence, rather than a special 44

Editors who cherish their authority need not apply.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Libby Averyt, Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Corpus Christi, Texas

hortly after I became a city editor almost a decade ago, a colleague at another paper told me my staff needed to see me mad – really mad. “Kick a trashcan across the room,” he advised. That just isn’t my style, and not just because I wear pointy-toed pumps. From my own experience I knew I did my best work when encouraged and supported, not when frightened and miserable. As a reporter, I wanted to do a good job, to please my bosses and readers, and I was disappointed in myself when I felt as if I’d failed. Employers who gave me some room to make mistakes and offered a kind word, patience and understanding are the mentors I still admire today. When I became editor three years ago, I knew I wanted the staff to work in an environment of mutual respect, camaraderie and compassion. My first step was finding the right managing editor – Shane Fitzgerald. He shared my commitment to journalism and workplace values. We knew we wanted to grow good people as much as good journalists. But we weren’t sure how to do it.

Through our corporate office, the E.W. Scripps Co., we became aware of the Learning Newsroom pilot project and quickly applied. The Learning Newsroom gave us the tools we needed to change the culture in our newsroom from perfectionist and defensive to one that is more cooperative and teamoriented. Seeing the remarkable changes in our newsroom, I initially believed everyone should embrace the Learning Newsroom philosophy. But it slowly dawned on me that this program isn’t for everyone. It takes leaders who are unafraid to admit they don’t have all the answers, a deep selfawareness and an ability to control the urge to get defensive. It takes a heartfelt belief that people in your newsroom really matter, that they should be treated as professionals whose opinions are valued. “Clearly this is not for a manager who wants to control everything that goes on in the newsroom,” says Bob Zaltsberg, editor at another Learning Newsroom pilot, The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind. “It requires the ability to share information and 45

responsibilities with others and trust them to make decisions, even if they make mistakes. “This made me a better manager because it made me evaluate my performance in a very serious way. I was always good at coming up with ideas and encouraging the newsroom to generate many, many more, but my style had a negative side because many ideas weren’t getting done. There was simply no way in hell to get all of the good ideas done. But I’d asked for them and they were on a paper somewhere. That led to some frustration. “I learned how to limit the numbers of ideas and how to move much more quickly, and I learned that it was much better to make a timely decision, even if unpopular, than to keep an idea alive hoping I’d figure out how to say ‘yes’ to it.” In Corpus Christi, we try to operate a newsroom where people treat each other as they’d like to be treated. Before you start worrying that our

philosophy sounds too much like what they teach in kindergarten, let me assure you, our irreverence and quirkiness remain. We are a diverse newsroom ranging in age from the low 20s to over 60. Some of us have children, others prefer pets. We’re married, single, brown, white, gay, straight. We are all very different but have grown to appreciate each others’ differences. We still disagree, get irritated with each other and have serious performance discussions when needed. But we operate from the common belief that we all want the best product for our readers and we are open to hearing each others’ opinions. “We had a pretty good idea the young people on their first or second jobs would buy into the idea that we thought their ideas mattered,” Fitzgerald said in recapping our Learning Newsroom journey. “Where I was most encouraged was that a good percentage – certainly higher than I

A staff-led training session at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. 46

Ask if you’re willing to say, “What do you think?” and truly mean it, and then go with ideas that aren’t yours alone. LIBBY AVERYT

expected – of our veteran staffers didn’t necessarily fit the stereotype of ‘cynical journalist.’ “Several of them have been leaders in adopting culture change. I think it reinvigorated many in the newsroom and helped them see that the radical changes we’re seeing in our industry don’t mean newspapers are in trouble. It means they’re growing and changing.” This type of initiative isn’t for everyone. For editors who have difficulty sharing power or tend to get a little control freaky, this likely isn’t the program for them. There is no one-size-fits-all answer for every newspaper dealing with revenue and circulation challenges, and it’s up to each of us to find what will work best in our newsrooms. “That is the key to succeeding in this environment,” Zaltsberg said. “Being open to new ideas, to new ways of doing things, to new people making decisions, and to letting people make mistakes.” Before you jump into the Learning

Newsroom waters, take a good, hard look at yourself. Ask if you really want to change the way your newsroom operates in order to encourage those ideas. Ask if you’re willing to say, “What do you think?” and truly mean it, and then go with ideas that aren’t yours alone. If you’re still kicking that trashcan across the room, and liking it, then this probably isn’t for you. But if you’re ready to commit to a change that starts with you, then welcome aboard. Libby Averyt is editor of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in Corpus Christi, Texas. E-mail: AverytL@caller.com

What journalists should know about change “Newsrooms don’t even realize what we’re doing with our aggressive-defensive natures. And it gets in the way of so many simple things, it gets in the way of journalism of excellence, it gets in the way of having a workplace that people look forward to coming to and of collaboration. Just so many different things it affects.” BOB GABORDI, then editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times, Asheville, N.C.

t was through the Readership Institute’s Impact Study that many American journalists got the first clue that the way we relate with each other could negatively impact our ability to relate with consumers. It was a tough message to hear, that something we couldn’t see or touch, that wasn’t a piece of needed technology, could pose such a threat to newspapers’ survival. How could the way we do business inside the newsroom possibly matter so much to the outside world? “Newsrooms don’t even realize what we’re doing with our aggressive-defensive natures, said Bob Gabordi, then-editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times, and now executive editor of The Tallahassee Democrat. “And it gets in the way of so many simple things. It gets in the way of journalism of excellence, it gets in the way of having a workplace that people look forward to coming to and of collaboration. Just so many different things it affects.” Journalists are an impassioned lot. The best exude an air of certainty that serves them well in dealing with news sources who would try to manipulate them on a daily basis. So it will surprise no one that suggesting they need to change anything about the way they work will provoke a strong, negative response. And because wordsmiths have great vocabularies, they have 101 smart ways to voice that resistance. As much as the hue and cry for changing outmoded, top-down ways seems to center on leadership, there’s an equal burden on journalists of every stripe to re-evaluate whether their personal practices contribute to an organization that moves forward or one that stands still. The Learning Newsroom experience made it clear that in order to win their support, we had to get journalists on the front lines to see a connection between changing the way the newsroom works and improving the quality of the journalism they produce.

Advance work, finding our starting point The Learning Newsroom selection process gave editors plenty of opportunity to get familiar with the objectives and requirements of the partnership. We were asking them to test a formula for helping newsrooms find ways to move faster. Phone conversations and a thorough application process let top leaders get their heads around what we hoped to accomplish. Though most editors involved their top lieutenants early in the thinking, they awaited the project director’s introductory visit to deliver details more broadly. In two jam-packed days, we talked about each newspaper’s specific market challenges, recent ups and downs and experience with other change initiatives, knowing any approach must be tailored to the partner’s unique challenges. Every editor made staff fully accessible. The director met with dozens of people one-on-one or in small groups. There also were largegroup meetings to outline the yearlong plan and to get feedback. Staff reactions to the project’s aims ranged from disdainful to hopeful, with the majority showing mild curiosity. Once a partner was accepted into the program, more advance work began. Each staff took two surveys that provided other valuable input on perceptions of what worked and what didn’t in their newsrooms, as well as what would need to change to enable them to perform at their full potential. Even armed with volumes of information collected through these vari49

ous methods, it wasn’t until the launch visit that it became fully apparent to both the project team and the newsroom staffs where this work might lead. It wasn’t until the first series of four-hour training sessions that we had the opportunity to deliver back to staff, via their survey responses, their messages on where the work should begin. There were variations in how they got there and different signals about how quickly things might progress to an environment that better facilitates doing new things. But because newsrooms are so homogenous in their workplace styles, much about the starting point of each pilot was similar.

Why journalists should re-think their work environment Pre-launch surveys in the 10 Learning Newsroom pilots discerned two dominant styles of behavior commonly exhibited by journalists in their work lives: oppositional and perfectionistic. In each of the pilots, one style was primary, the other secondary. One of the passive styles came in as the third most predictable behavior in newsrooms. These findings fell in line with research by the Readership Institute that looked at workplace issues throughout 90 newspapers. The Learning Newsroom used the same research tool as the RI: the Organizational Culture Inventory®, developed by Human Synergistics International of Plymouth, Mich. This instrument has been used to assess workplace culture in thousands of organizations around the world and has been administered to approximately 3 million people. Portraits revealed in the culture portion of RI’s Impact Study and the benchmark OCIs in the 10 Learning Newsroom pilots were disturbingly similar, especially considering that up to five years had passed since the institute’s original analysis. In the case of one pilot where a year 2000 OCI was available for comparison with its starting point in this program, the newsroom had backtracked. Translated into practical terms, the OCI terms mean a new idea or change in routine might first be met by opposition from journalists. (“It would be stupid to do that.”) If that doesn’t work, perfectionism – particularly as evidenced in an unrealistic commitment to flawless results – might kick it. (“We don’t have time to do that.”) In some environments, this perfectionism might even be the first response. If there’s still a beating pulse to the idea, it might encounter passive resistance. (“I’ll go through the motions, but my heart’s not in it. This too will pass.”) Any of the three styles is equally effective at stopping a change initiative in its tracks. Anyone who has had to shepherd a new initiative in a newsroom won’t have trouble recalling those three reactions – be it around introducing a new piece of technology, launching a new page or section, or announcing a new weekend staffing plan. Imagine the volume of resistance for an initiative that suggests totally re-thinking the operation, such as that presented by the Learning Newsroom program. Still, organizational experts say it is precisely these bad habits that leave us ill-prepared to adapt to changes in consumer needs, let alone to anticipate them. Journalists have no trouble immediately citing hurdles they believe stand in the way of doing their best work. Likewise, they recognize that some bullying occurs in newsrooms and it can be counterproductive. It takes some time, however, for recognition to set in that even those who are innocent of the worst behavior have a stake in setting the organization on a better path. 50

Thankfully, we can report many journalists today seem to be willing to tackle these stagnating styles. In fact, from the introductory visits, a core group of would-be change agents began to emerge. The vision of greater engagement by the rank and file, breaking away from old ways of doing things when they no longer make sense, and focusing more outwardly – on consumers – and less on wearisome turf concerns carried great appeal. By the end of the first Learning Newsroom training session, when we issued a formal invitation for steering committee volunteers to spend a year leading conversations around change, enough enthusiasm had built to convince – in most cases – three to four times the number of people needed to raise their hands for the cause. There proved ample opportunity to enlist everyone in leg work around specific projects.

Beginning the conversation We started by outlining the staff’s own feedback on the way things work now (the OCI results). Then program facilitators explained why current behavior can stifle innovation, leave individuals feeling stressed and disengaged, and otherwise harm the organization. Additional steps that can set the stage for change:

We reviewed their leadership’s stated goals for the newsroom and the organization. They quickly recognized the discrepancy between what needed to be achieved and the staff’s ability to deliver.

We shared responses on a second survey where individuals cited skills and energy not being fully utilized. Unlike the OCI, this short survey allowed for narrative responses, which some staffers used to describe in detail how they believed good ideas were being choked out by the current system. Common themes included feelings that there were no avenues for honest twoway communication, too much influence by a few loud voices, insufficient feedback, and insufficient and/or ineffective training and development plans. And overwhelmingly, the staff said the organization – at every level – was afraid of taking the risks necessary to attract new readers.

We reiterated the outline for the partnership. A year would be dedicated to finding better ways of working. Management was essentially offering frontline staff a seat at the table and an invitation to take a greater role in conversations about the future. To make the best of that opportunity, staff would be offered training to prepare them for that greater voice. They would learn about the business side of the newspaper, including the organization’s biggest challenges. They would be shown more effective ways of communicating and asked to take their share of the responsibility for effective communication up, down and across the newsroom. Models for innovation that have worked in other industries would be presented, along with tips on how to manage time better. They would be shown ways to analyze individual processes in the operation in order get at those steps that needed to be fixed and those that should be abandoned because they seem to no longer reflect the smartest use of resources. Every group session would yield a list of opportunities for change, and a steering committee of frontline staff would develop suggestions around those that seemed the most promising. Because this was the real world, management still had the final say. 51

We sought honest dialogue. Calling the concepts underlying the Learning Newsroom’s approach a bunch of hooey was acceptable, as long as you said it in the training room. From the start, we laid down the challenge that it was not fair to get back to one’s desk and grumble with peers after the fact if you hadn’t shared such thinking publicly. Toni Antonellis and Pierre “Pete” Meyer, our two organizational development consultants, were adept at drawing resistance out into the open. Doing so was necessary to clarify understanding and engage the group as partners in change, but it also served as a reminder of what those who would propose an alternate model would be up against. Journalists don’t lack in creativity, and they’re not oblivious to the marketplace realities signaling a need for different approaches to delivering news. They’ve simply adopted behaviors their environment seems to prescribe, often to the point of saying in surveys that rather than fight the system, they would abide by these unwritten rules of behavior even when they know they don’t make sense. That finding turned some heads. Patience is needed of those who would promote change in newsrooms and of those who would defend against the need for it. At the earliest stage in the conversation, the best one can hope is that most people will keep an open mind.

‘OK, now prove you’re proposing something better’ To remake a newsroom as a more bottom-up place, quicker to move and less reliant on hierarchical authority, requires ownership of the changed behaviors, not compliance. The invitation for honest communication meant the Learning Newsroom team seldom wondered how we were faring as the months progressed. Even as it began to seem that most in the room were striving to be open, even as journalists began showing some interest in the new tools they were learning, and even as they grasped the danger in the status quo, the objections didn’t subside. Especially in group settings, we knew we could bank on continuing to get some knee-jerk reactions. Typical ones we heard around the terms “oppositional” and “perfectionistic” behavior: “If we’re argumentative, it’s because we need to be this way,” or “So, you’re saying a few mistakes in the paper are OK?” Regarding oppositional behavior, specifically, it can help to emphasize that the differences sought in personal styles pertain to the way newsroom employees interact off the street – among their colleagues. Better habits are needed to replace some of the competitive modes that have even coworkers complaining of wasted energy. Nothing about the curriculum we followed promotes toothless tigers, a lessening of the commitment to expose public corruption or group hugs in the workplace. Beating the competition outside the building is still to be desired. Similarly, a certain level of conflict is normal and healthy in an organization – but not at the expense of making people conclude the place is so stuck in its ways, it’s not worth their breath to pitch a new idea. The value of collaboration must be given new emphasis. For example, the Learning Newsroom pilots found that they could begin to communicate more openly around business strategy without fear of leaks and without compromising journalistic ethics. Newsrooms measured up to the new display of trust. A personal turning point for one journalist seemed to come during a business literacy training session led by Antonellis at The Hamilton Spectator. After hearing department heads in circulation, advertising, production and 52

finance cite their biggest challenges, the reporter wondered why these facts hadn’t been shared earlier. This writer, who would come to stand out for his thoughtful processing of the concepts around change, said, “We’ve focused so long on the urgent, I’m not sure how we get to the important.” The answer for smart people like journalists is to show them. Engineers, architects and other professionals routinely analyze operations in order to continuously make improvements. These reviews are done with cool heads and without a lot of angst around defensive reactions. But how routine is the big project post-mortem in newsrooms? Introducing a simple method of process analysis can help journalists do more. Likewise, showing evidence of successful makeovers in other organizations that have faced declining consumer demand, as we did in the innovation sessions, can be useful. It’s reasonable to expect a high level of resistance among journalists. But it’s pointless to spend a lot of time in one-on-one dialogue to try to win over the strongest nay-sayers. As much as we want to believe we are all reasonable people and can be convinced with proof of a better way, each individual in the newsroom will have to find his or her way to an acceptance of the concepts. Some may never get there. Presented with facts, many journalists will grasp the need to consider different ways of working. The conversation did evolve over the course of the program, from “We’re angry about what you’re telling us” to “What do you expect of us?” to “Let’s try something different.” Sponsors must lay out the case for change, including translating possible payoffs down to a personal level. After that, the most powerful tool for gaining support and getting past resistance will be showing results.

Reasons our change agents say they took the plunge Sometimes it was a close-up example of better ways of doing things that convinced a staffer to volunteer her energy for the Learning Newsroom work, as was the case for Kelly Kearsley, a reporter at The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. “My husband works for startup Web companies, and I see how fast they change and I’ve watched him and the success that they have in those companies. And I see newspapers and how slow we move as compared to what’s happened in the outside world.” Kearsley said she hoped to see habits change so that newsrooms would “not rely on survey data from a decade ago and 10,000 committee meetings to make something happen.” For others, like John Boyle, a columnist-reporter for the Asheville Citizen-Times, and Susan Rife, books editor at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the

“I was interested in what ways we could find to make the newspaper business really feel like it was still a viable home for me as a journalist.” SUSAN RIFE, books editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune

timing was right for the conversation. “It’s really critical that we start looking at these things as an industry because we are declining in circulation and you know there’s no doubt that newspapers are in trouble,” Boyle said. “I think we’re doing a lot of things that are pulling us out of that, but looking at the culture you’ve got to realize that you just can’t keep doing things the same way you’ve been doing them for 40 or 50 years.” “I was very interested in the Learning Newsroom because as somebody at the midpoint in my career I’m very interested in how we move forward into the next 20 years or so, hopefully, before I can actually retire,” Rife said. “I was interested in what ways we could find to make the newspaper business really feel like it was still a viable home for me as a journalist.” Bill Dunphy, a reporter at The Hamilton Spectator, voiced an even greater sense of urgency. “I think the future is pretty much do – or die slowly,” he said. “The way that we’ve done things traditionally has served us very well, and it still serves us really well in digging out stories and producing certain kinds of stories. It serves us very badly when it comes to changing the ways that we reach people. We’re seeing that a lot of people don’t care for the way we’re talking to them. We have to change our culture so we can listen to those people and find new ways of reaching them.” John Metz, a twenty-something committee member on the Corpus Christi staff, said he wanted a workplace more comfortable with “thinking big, thinking odd” and then developing those ideas onto practical approaches. “I think it’s important to be daring and willing to take large risks and small ones,” he said. In a conversation about a year into the program, Dunphy recalled anticipating, rightly, the difficulty of this type of work. “There was no more resistance to change than there is gravity,” Dunphy said with a dramatic pause, “Um, there was a lot of resistance to change in our newsroom. There always is. And that’s one of the things we’ve worked very hard to overcome. We’ve found that we’ve been able to make small gains in certain areas and a few large gains that we’re happy with – around the notion of consultation and collaboration – that seem to be more accepted and expected in the newsroom. We’ve seen more ideas coming up from the newsroom floor. So we’ve had some success here, but I think we’re only a very small way along a very long path.” It should be noted that while this book will cite numerous examples of changed practices, efficiencies found and even new products launched, even a year or more into the work, no newsroom felt entirely satisfied with its outcomes. All the steering committees believed they could have done more. Some of that is classic overachiever syndrome. The project team considered every partnership a success and every newsroom’s accomplishments impressive.

“We’re seeing that a lot of people don’t care for the way we’re talking to them. We have to change our culture so we can listen to those people and find new ways of reaching them.” BILL DUNPHY, reporter, The Hamilton Spectator

Most of the committees went into year two with a desire to protect the fledgling systems that were enabling change and eager to protect their new voice and to avoid a return to old ways. Some, for example, incorporated an introduction to Learning Newsroom concepts into orientations for new hires or even interviews with job applicants. But all stressed how draining the first year can be, the need for managers to make time for steering committee members to work around normal duties and the reality that a year’s service is all anyone can reasonably ask before fresh troops are needed. To a person, top editors agreed, saying they too wanted to preserve and continue the progress. Though as noted elsewhere, a relative few but still vocal middle managers were ready to see the work end. Bill Johnston, an original steering committee member in Hamilton, might have said it best when noting in a January 2007 e-mail that after nearly two years of great strides toward increasing collaboration there, the process should still be seen as “perishable.”

Steps to help the work gain momentum Our approach included several elements designed to fuel the transition to a more constructive workplace:

> The steering committee of frontline staff would lead conversations on finding specific avenues for change. > The committee represented diverse voices, across all job types and age groups. > Middle managers were asked to play a supporting role for the first few months. > The committee worked within ground rules written to protect them from their critics, including doing business in total transparency and steering clear of suggestions grounded in personal agendas. > The committee was a clearing house for the work of subcommittees and project-specific, short-term task forces. > The work proceeded with a sense of purpose and urgency. > Top leaders were cued up on ways they could support the change. > Management still made the final call. Nothing about this model should be seen as promoting a “majority rules” democracy. See page 33 for a list of considerations for senior leaders and page 102 for suggestions on committee guidelines.

Editors describe moving past resistance At the start, program facilitators emphasized to both management and frontline staff the need to “invite, invite, invite” even skeptics to engage in the effort. Three or four months into the endeavor, the emphasis turned from persuasion to a greater focus on those who shared the vision. Management likewise recognized the value of a pragmatic approach. “I 55

would never say everyone has embraced it,” Spectator Managing Editor Roger Gillespie said at one of the API symposia. “One of the things that you have to accept when you go into a project like this is that you’re not going to find Shangri-la; that you’re not going to change, fundamentally, the nature of your newspaper overnight and that not everyone will buy in. That’s simply something you have to accept from the outset. That doesn’t mean that you exclude people. But it means that you don’t become frustrated and move backwards because not everyone thinks it’s brilliant. Not everyone thinks it’s brilliant; it’s that simple.” Corpus Christi Caller-Times Editor Libby Averyt came to a similar way of thinking. “In a newsroom of 70 people, we’re not going to get everybody’s buy-in and that’s OK,” she said. “If I had the majority of folks who were interested and buying into this and wanting to act like a leader in the newsroom, then that’s great. ... The rest of them can come along for the ride.” So too did Dave Zeeck, executive editor of The News Tribune in Tacoma, estimating that only about 10 percent of staff there could be considered outright obstructionists of the work. “At some point you invite them in and say, ‘Well, then come in and shape it the way you want it.’ And a few took that option. There were some that never did,” Zeeck said, “They just stayed on the sideline the entire time and were oppositional and at some point you just have to move past that and say it just doesn’t matter. They’re always going to be there and you can’t let it stop for that reason.” At about this point, teams charged with leading the work also seemed to need encouragement to put modesty aside and publicly own and market their successes. The larger population must see outcomes as directly attributable to all the conversation and work around change. This led to sometimes humorous moments when steering committees and middle managers argued over who was due credit for the genesis of an idea that proved successful. Sometimes initiatives that had lain dormant for months could be launched in short order with the increased focus on change. Leaders were able to sufficiently commend everyone to get past any jealousy. Dunphy described the benefits of picking up the pace: “What we’ve been trying to do is demonstrate as clearly as possible to the newsroom that you can

“Small, achievable risks that you can celebrate – that matter – are good to give you confidence to go forward. … Everybody’s idea can be discussed and, even if at first it seems impractical or odd, it can be taken a step further and lead to an idea that maybe really does work or creates a really positive change.” JOHN METZ, a Learning Newsroom committee member at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in Corpus Christi, Texas

get an idea and you can make it happen. And if people see that happening more, and the more they see that management buys into that and supports it, they will, we hope, come around to it.” Metz from Corpus Christi recognized that even after suggestions begin to flow more freely, ideas still need to be honed before testing. That can occur within the safety of the committee process, and every newsroom developed skills along these lines. “Small, achievable risks that you can celebrate – that matter – are good to give you confidence to go forward. … Everybody’s idea can be discussed and, even if at first it seems impractical or odd, it can be taken a step further and lead to an idea that maybe really does work or creates a really positive change.” Victoria Ayotte-Brown, a copy editor and key architect around some high-profile outcomes on behalf of readers of the Lincoln Journal Star, likewise recalled the value of getting small wins quickly in order to recruit more staff support. “I would say we had some people who wouldn’t join a committee initially and in time they came to see that, you know ‘Hey, maybe I should become involved in this; it looks like they’re doing a lot of stuff,’ and so they joined and it’s been great to have all the different voices involved.” Committees looked for the “low-hanging fruit”: those projects that could win easy support from broad segments of the staff and could be accomplished quickly. A common one was revision of traditional monthly or quarterly newsroom awards programs. Nearly every pilot got quick support from management for switching to peer-judged contests, sometimes remaking categories to better reflect new areas of emphasis, such as outstanding accomplishments on the Web site. That prizes were sometimes modest – a coffee mug or a $5 gift certificate – didn’t seem to diminish the enthusiasm.

How change occurred Committees were urged to keep in close contact with the top leaders – not to ask permission or to be told where to focus for their work (Otherwise, what would have been different about this venture?), but to avoid duplication of efforts if there might be another team elsewhere in the organization tackling the same issue. No one on any committee had a problem with the notion that top leaders do not like surprises. It would have been unfortunate to have an editor who was supportive enough to take on a change initiative of this magnitude feel blindsided if she learned of a major committee venture from the publisher. The frontline teams worked out a rhythm for signaling broad topics they intended to pursue early on, and editors met that in like measure by withholding judgment on ideas until they were fully developed. Both sides looked forward to formal presentations and were prepared for reasoned analyses of wellprepared plans. Editors also committed at the program’s start to make time to hear directly from the committee, though in places where we saw best practices, the committee sought advice and buy-in from middle managers prior to the final pitches to top leaders. Editors were very circumspect in the few instances when development of an idea had to be stopped early on because it would have been a waste of time. The training program on communication, including topics such as conflict resolution, was the first on our agenda for a reason. By the time specific and substantial suggestions for change worked their way to final approval, top leaders, frontline staff and in many cases middle managers had already 57

learned how to change their behavior in order to encourage innovation. Editors had begun to say “yes” more. Frontline staff were hurling fewer barbs around everyday work life. Supervisors gave more specific and frequent feedback. When it came time to pitch big ideas, the level of conversation was less heated and more grown up. Some suggestions didn’t get approved, but the sting wasn’t so strong when the rejections came without unnecessary delay and with an explanation. “No” is the right answer on many occasions. Leaders still have the job of picking which initiatives are the best bets for limited resources. Two areas where nearly every pilot saw quick progress: improving Web operations and revamping staff training and development plans. The Spectator’s Dunphy recaps the history of both efforts there, under the leadership of the Tools and Training subcommittee: “A group of people from right across the newsroom – librarians, reporters, editors – put together a calendar for peer-to-peer training that goes throughout the entire year. Some of the sessions that they put on have gotten people very, very excited about those possibilities of breaking down some barriers in the newsroom.” Two years into the work, with the panel having been entrusted with one-third of the newsroom training budget and an expanded calendar that incorporates sessions from outside trainers, these efforts remain a high-profile outcome and an important legacy of the Learning Newsroom experience. Simultaneously, another Spectator subcommittee – the Tech Gang – began inquiries into what was then a formatted, corporate-controlled Web site. The group first asked to meet the online executive in charge of the site, who welcomed their interest. Request No. 2 was for a corner of the site for staff experimentation. With proof that the new window was picking up more readers, things moved quickly, Dunphy explained. “We’ve opened that up, created a live breaking-news Web site, we’ve added video components, audio components, and people are getting excited about those new ways of telling stories, which is improving morale. Generally, I think, that’s a good thing that will improve staff retention, I hope, which is all good for the product.” Nearly always, Web goals and training goals converged, as Al McKeon, a member of the steering committee at The Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., print circulation 26,750, describes here: “We had an innovation committee that proposed, and right away capitalized on, pushing multimedia on our Web site, going into audio and photo slide shows, video reporting, and we put a proposal together and it was approved by the publisher. … We had training classes with all the staff that were widely attended and everyone enjoyed them as well, learning this new great frontier of journalism.” The newspaper’s editor, Nick Pappas, attributed more than 100 Web projects to the online initiative within its first six months.

Getting past the jargon Organizational theory feels like hocus pocus to journalists. Because most of us haven’t heard of it, we don’t want to grant it validity. It’s easy enough, however, to vacuum out most of the foreign terminology and go after the core triggers for change, as was the aim of the Learning Newsroom curriculum. Still, coming to understand a little of the lingo was necessary even to impart survey results where the staff explained what was malfunctioning in the ways their newsrooms work. So some elaboration is necessary on each of the two loaded words – perfectionism and opposition – that organizational 58

Identifying Workplace Culture The research tool used by the Learning Newsroom to track progress in its efforts to help journalists become more nimble at change is the Organizational Culture Inventory®. It identifies three types of workplace cultures, with “constructive” as the desired state. In each culture, four styles of behavior are most likely to be dominant. Surveys in all 10 pilots showed each was an aggressive-defensive workplace at the start of the pilot partnership. The seven newsrooms that have completed 18-month followup surveys as of this writing have all shown imcreases in constructive behavior. A few have shown large segments of their staffs making great strides. See more on those results on page 121.

Constructive Culture ■ ■ ■ ■

Humanistic: Encouraging, supportive Affiliative: Cooperative, tactful Achievement: Accomplishment, challenging goals Self-actualizing: Quality, enjoyment

Passive/Defensive Culture ■ ■ ■ ■

Approval: Acceptance, agreement Conventional: Conforming, ‘status quo’ Dependent: Obey, follow instructions Avoidance: Wait and observe, resist risk taking

Aggressive/Defensive Culture ■ ■ ■ ■

Oppositional: Contrariness, disagreement Power: Authoritative, controlling Competitive: Win, outperform others Perfectionistic: No errors, long hours, unrealistic standards

experts use most frequently to describe newsroom ills. No one would deny that both behaviors have their positive attributes – in appropriate doses – in the context of journalism. Journalists must be independent and skeptical so as not to be used. To be suspicious and argumentative among one’s coworkers is going too far. Experts say oppositional behavior at the troublesome level seen in newsrooms today goes beyond a tendency to ask tough questions, which can lead to better ideas. Rather, it’s at a volume that emphasizes even minor flaws, promotes criticism as a means of gaining attention and leads to situations where people blame others for their own mistakes. Perfectionism, as described here, is in no way to be confused with a commitment to accuracy, essential to every journalist and the organizations that employ them. What exists today is a commitment to accuracy run amok, an unattainable goal of perfection. Human Synergistics’ definition notes people governed by this drive tend to “equate self-worth with the attainment of unreasonably high standards. People high in this style are preoccupied with details, place excessive demands on themselves and others, and tend to show impatience, frustration, and indifference toward others’ needs and feelings.” Not a model for nimbleness, for sure. Program facilitators saw this play out in an inability to devote time to considering new ways of doing things, however urgent the need. A concrete example was a pilot that discovered through the process-analysis exercise that some wire pages were being proofread by up to five people. The staff decided some streamlining could occur, and perfectionism decreased, without great risk. Not only our top two headline behaviors but all of the 12 workplace styles have value in the appropriate amount, with different situations calling for a spike in some and a decrease in others. Even the positives, in

extreme, can have their downsides. An overemphasis on cooperation (the affiliative style) could make an organization slow-moving if the leader waited on 100 percent buy-in before taking an action. Rather than rushing to judgment, a passive behavior such as avoidance might be prudent, although at the high level seen in most newsrooms, it is another trouble spot. Some editors may be fostering their newsroom’s worst habits and increasing let’s-stand-still tendencies without knowing it. This can occur in the guise of promoting “creative tension,” where the editor winks at bad practices under the misconception that “If we expect them to run like animals in the streets in the search of good stories, we should expect them to claw the furniture back in the office.” The organizational experts would say that in the current environment, journalists don’t have the constructive styles – for example a clear, overriding expectation for teamwork or a track record for setting and attaining goals together – to act as counterbalances necessary for this to constitute sound reasoning. Likewise, studies across industries show that a commitment to flawlessness to the degree newsrooms exhibit does not, in fact, result in lower error rates or prevent mistakes. One of the most succinct explanations of the risk posed by current newsroom behavior came in a 2001 piece written by Peggy Kuhr, then of The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash., and now Knight Chair in Community Journalism at the University of Kansas William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Kuhr interviewed organizational change expert Robert Cooke, then a professor of management studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and one of the developers of the Organizational Culture Inventory®. “A Conversation About Newspaper Culture Change” (available at www.readership.org) included a foretelling of the reactions we would see throughout this project.

Kuhr: If you were a newspaper editor, what would you do after seeing the survey results (in the Impact Study newspapers regarding culture)?

Cooke: Though you may not have meant it this way, I’m going to take your question literally. Playing out the aggressive cultural norms prevailing in many of the newspapers in the sample, I would first challenge the methods used to generate the results (Oppositional culture) and question the survey’s ability to tap the unique characteristics of news organizations (Perfectionistic). Alternatively, passive norms would prevail and I would rationalize the culture of my newspaper on the basis of the industry’s results (Conventional) and conclude that any changes I might initiate are likely to fail given the nature and state of the industry (Dependent). I might then temporarily face reality given that the survey results strongly suggest that a more constructive culture is not only feasible, but also desirable and related to valued outcomes such as readership. Thus, I would charge my internal Human Resource group or engage external Organizational Development consultants, all of whom I can fire at will (Power), to constructively redirect the culture of the organization. And, as soon as possible, I would try to forget the whole thing (Avoidance) and move onto seemingly more pressing problems. It’s a good bet many newsrooms will forego remaking their operations to reflect a more bottom-up focus, citing a lack of time. But just as we have come 60

to recognize “no time to read” from former subscribers can really be translated to “your product isn’t important enough for me to make time for it,” that would be a sad prospect. Dishearteningly, our focus on time means journalists are running pellmell to a future they haven’t discussed or envisioned on their own, let alone with their peers. Keys to a greater likelihood of success are within reach – and in the group setting where they spend more waking hours than anywhere else.

Final tips on addressing resistance “Journalists by and large are a kind of crusty, complaining lot, but they are also very hard-working people,” said John Boyle, reporter-columnist of the Asheville Citizen-Times. “You’ve also got a real perfectionist mentality in newsrooms. … I think it was really a great idea to try to address some of those issues.” Even with a team of early supporters exploring new ways of doing things, and even after agreeing that the loudest voices against change won’t be allowed to stop progress, success at this type of initiative will require attention to the core group in the middle. Old ways of thinking die hard. The reasonable “show-me” majority may want to pick up the cause but will need to see their objections can be voiced and addressed. Here’s how Learning Newsroom facilitators responded to a few that seemed to come up time and again.

We’re unique, charged with protecting the democracy. We’re supposed to be jerks, aren’t we? Not inside the building, in our dealings with each other. Smart organizations know internal competition carries a limited value and can’t be allowed to threaten teamwork. Newsrooms today need everyone engaged in the task of survival. Additionally, sociologically some of our standard communication styles don’t sit well with younger staff. Rainmaker Thinking Inc., a Connecticut research, training and consulting firm that specializes in the working lives of Generations X and Y, says younger workers tend to think independently, relish responsibility, expect a continual sense of accomplishment and thrive on challenging work. Just as our surveys showed was the case with many other broad segments of the newsroom staff, journalists in this demographic want more freedom and flexibility. Progress here may also support other efforts at diversity, including recruiting and keeping journalists of color. Opening up the newsroom to more ideas is facilitated by increasing the number of voices and perspectives. Getting that type of engagement is difficult in an environment charged with oppositional behavior. Veterans and newcomers have equal stakes in seeing improvement here, as do staffers of every other demographic. In one launch visit, journalists of color voiced empathy with younger staffers when their sentiments were being diminished by some veterans. And why not? Their life experiences also included instances of being left out of the conversation for reasons that had no grounding. At least half of the pilots used Learning Newsroom-generated projects to strengthen community connections, focus more on under-covered segments of the community or broaden efforts to recruit journalists of color, as well as in “getting younger staff to speak up more.” 61

It’s not us, it’s society. Younger people just aren’t as informed today. Study after study around consumption of news indicates otherwise. Young people just increasingly turn to other sources for information they find more interesting.

These things are someone else’s job. It’s the publisher’s responsibility to save the business. We’ll wait for those well-resourced metro papers to find the next great thing to help attract new readers. We can no longer wait on a rescue from somewhere else. Building a smarter operation requires everyone’s help, and successful organizations know the best answers come from the front lines.

Culture change in newsrooms is such a big task, it’s hopeless. Consequences of doing nothing are obvious in downward trend lines in circulation and revenue, and increasingly frequent industry reports of layoffs. It’s time to concede some of the problem is in the way journalists work together and to learn from decades of research into how other organizations changed practices and became more successful. The Learning Newsroom’s experience in 10 pilots representing a cross-section of the industry shows there is good reason to be hopeful.

You say you want a Revolution ...

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Bill Dunphy, The Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

ack in late 2001 the readership numbers at The Hamilton Spectator were pretty grim. While circulation had been on a merely gentle decline for some time, readership in some categories – notably women – was plummeting. The Spectator responded with a revolution – albeit a slow and cautious one. It was no mere “redesign.” Heavily marketed as The Revolution, it came pretty darn close to a torch and pitchfork parade. The paper went from six sections to four; sports went tabloid; many of the “touch them and die” features – comics, Dear Abby, TV listings, etc. – were cut or moved. The centerpiece was the creation of Go, a daily magazine aimed squarely at our women readers. Staffing levels weren’t increased, but as many as 40 percent of us found ourselves in new jobs on launch day. It took 18 months of research, design and broad newsroom consultation, but it was worth it. Readership in our targeted groups – women, “boomers” and infrequent readers – increased. Editors from papers as far

away as Washington state and Sweden visited the newsroom to see how it had been done; our managers spoke at conference after conference across North America. But the truth is, while the scope of change was revolutionary, the innovation itself was generated and managed in a pretty traditional, top-down, command and control fashion. On the newsroom floor we were working differently, but we weren’t being particularly innovative. And the world around us didn’t stop changing just because we had. With the splintering of the ad market, and readers’ continued migration to the Web, we needed to be vastly more nimble. Luckily, as the French well know, every revolution has its counter-revolution. Here at The Spectator, that came in the form of the Learning Newsroom. In many ways THIS was truly revolutionary – senior management was seeking to give up control, to flatten the decision-making process, to kick onto the newsroom floor extraordinary amounts of authority and power. “What do we need to do, and how are we going to do it?” they asked. 63

“Figure it out.” We set up a steering committee and sub-committees on training, technology, communication, and a host of other areas. In a parallel process the Learning Newsroom project team delivered a series of high-impact, high-visibility training modules that put management tools in the hands of “ordinary” staff while loudly signaling that the game had changed. For some, the early adopters I guess, that signal was like the gate lifting at the Preakness – they were off like a shot. Many others, however, preferred to watch from the stands: suspicious or too time-starved to take part. This was not surprising. The paper had just come off a bitter contract negotiation and a culture survey showed us to be an aggressive-defensive culture. We were isolationist, resistant to change and mistrustful of each other. We were driving out our young staff and embittering many of our old ones. We needed to change the way we thought about ourselves

almost as much as we needed to change the things we did and the way we did them. Print journalists’ resistance to change is legendary (just look at the way we dress), and there were times when we struggled, when those of us pushing for change felt like we were running through chest-high water – in a rip tide. It was more than just change resistance; finding the time to innovate and time to participate in or manage that process proved to be a constant bedevilment. Looking back now, nearly two years later, it’s hard to see past the wreckage of things we tried and failed at, and especially the things we did that were truly innovative and culturechanging. Who notices the water they swim in? But the truth is that some fundamental changes did happen in this newsroom. We began to believe – to take for granted almost – that change was pos-

During a training session in early 2006, Marissa Nelson, a reporter at The Hamilton Spectator, reports her group’s suggestions for ways that newsroom might save time and otherwise improve operations.

sible, desirable, achievable. We created a culture where consultation was not just desirable, but expected. When the paper began experimenting with ads that invaded the news hole, we arranged a forum where the editor-in-chief and the vice president of advertising were subjected to the kind of grilling journalists usually reserve for faltering public officials. We changed the way we thought about professional development, placing an emphasis on peer-to-peer training. One of the most popular sessions involved a senior investigative reporter throwing open her tool box and freely sharing her secrets. It was more popular than an expensive brand-name writing session. The Tech Gang, a subcommittee, drew up a dream list of innovation for our locked-down shovel-ware Web site – live news, video, podcasts, blogs – and when management was slow to adopt the ideas, the group launched live news on the Web, producing it for months on a volunteer rotation before it was formally staffed. We developed sound/slide shows, video shorts, and more. Web traffic has skyrocketed. Former members of the Tech Gang are launching Web U., a hugely ambitious training program that will see every member of the newsroom, staff and manager alike, spend a full week working on the Web, dividing their time between training on the Web tools and producing their own Webfirst journalism project. And in an effort to lock in the fragile culture of innovation that was developing, the steering committee has designed – and won management approval for – a virtual Research and Development department. The Innovation Time Bank creates a pool of time equal to two weeks per staffer per year that can be drawn upon by staff who want to work on their own innovation projects. Former Editor-In-Chief Dana Robbins said the Learning Newsroom project increased staff capacity “expo-

nentially ... I am endlessly amazed at how the capacity within our organization to generate news content has increased as a result of the cultural change that we’ve seen.” A simple example serves to make the point. When Robbins decided we needed to remake the paper way back in early 2002, it took him 18 months to launch The Revolution. In 2006, when he decided to finish that process by radically re-making our front news section, Revolution 2 didn’t take 18 months – it took about 12 weeks. But in the time since the formal Learning Newsroom project ended, we’ve learned that the gains we’ve made cannot be taken for granted. Our outcomes, one former steering committee member said recently, “are fragile.” “In a shaky managerial atmosphere, can we continue to move forward? When we head into another round of bargaining, how will the Learning Newsroom fare?” she asked. A change in publisher and the departure of Robbins has thrown the Innovation Time Bank into limbo, and we’re finding it increasingly difficult to keep alive the newsroom’s commitment to the hard work of openness and consultation that lie at the heart of the Learning Newsroom initiative. But fail or flourish, the process has nonetheless armed a significant subset of the newsroom with the knowledge and skills to innovate. “That genie,” Robbins said during a farewell talk to the newsroom, “is not going back in the bottle.” Bill Dunphy, a reporter at The Hamilton Spectator in Hamilton, Ont., Canada, wrote this on behalf of steering committee members Agnes Bongers, Carmelina Prete, Bill Johnston, Nicole MacIntyre, Peter Haentjens, Stephanie Henderson, Stephen Arnold, Catherine Coward, Denise Davy, Jeff Day, Ross Longbottom, Sara Perks and Roger Gillespie. E-mail: BDunphy@TheSpec.com 65

Some elements of the Learning Newsroomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s formula for change irritated middle managers for sure. Was it misinterpretation or resistance?

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Pierre â&#x20AC;&#x153;Peteâ&#x20AC;? Meyer, MDA Consultants, Inc., Sarasota, Florida

t the end of the first Learning Newsroom training module, we introduced the structure for a steering committee. We left in place a small group, representative of the newsroom, to coordinate and guide the work. This was a team of people who believed in the effort and were willing to devote extra time to it. For many years, I have warned organizations that in times of change, people turn to leaders as the only people who can chart the new ways. Further, middle managers often become the communicators of these change efforts, but they also react to change from their own vantage-point. We worried that the frontline journalists in the newsroom would yield their own thinking and relinquish project direction to managers. So we established a first, basic principle regarding membership on the committee: In the early months of the work, no midlevel or senior manager or leader should be a member of the panel. This proved to be a point often misinterpreted. Some mid-level managers understood our concern. Others were sorry that we had said they could not offer their ideas. Some were angry, believing that we had eliminated them from the process. A few were vocal in

their determination to ignore or undermine the efforts of the committee and the project. On return trips, we were confronted by this resistance. We often reminded all that we also had established four related principles:

> The prohibition existed only for the first few months, > Managers could be invited into conversations of the committee, and should be consulted on issues related to management of the newsroom, > Steering committee members should keep mid-managers fully informed about committee proceedings, and > After the committee was wellestablished, managers and leaders would be invited to be full participants in the process. Unfortunately, most seemed to remember only the first principle. In a number of newsrooms, we faced a sense of injury, a conviction of disenfranchisement, and confrontation about our foolish principle. Occasionally, we called special meetings of leaders and managers so we could re-explain our reasoning and ask for their forbearance. We under66

stood the concerns for broader membership and the value of the ideas of managers and leaders. Around and around we went with this issue. On the negative side, some managers committed to try to undermine and derail the project. On the positive side, steering committee members began to see the value in limiting managersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; participation. They also began to contribute outstanding work and they began to invite managers to enter the conversations, many of whom now joined with vigor. Today, some of the editors of these newsrooms still wonder if the principle was the right way to operate. They believe that the process would have been smoother if managers had been represented on the committee from the start. We facilitators are convinced that the process served to aid the maturing of the committee work. We also are certain that it prevented managers from using their formal power or authority for control of the process, even if such control would have been an unintended consequence. A similar concern was raised regarding four-hour training modules.

In informal surveys after the five sessions, some of our partners complained about that length of time. We still hold that 20 hours of training over the course of a year is not too much to ask against a goal of seeing radical change in the operation. In my experience, this is a concern almost unique to newsrooms. Circulation and advertising staff do not have that problem. Emergency medical staff, airline pilots, law enforcement staff, and teachers face time pressures but do not hold to that objection. If anything, I would extend the hours and perhaps combine the modules into one- or two-day sessions. We knew measuring culture change was primary to our work even if some would forever remain convinced that no one can measure journalists, and by extension, the way they do their work. In the face of signals that readers find their work product increasingly irrelevant, such steadfast defense of the status quo seems unwise. Pierre â&#x20AC;&#x153;Peteâ&#x20AC;? Meyer is an industrial psychologist and consultant based in Sarasota, Fla. E-mail: pmeyermda@tampabay.rr.com

Pete Meyer consults with San Jose Mercury News Editor Susan Goldberg during a training session.

Journalists who steadfastly defend the status quo may find themselves at risk.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Pierre “Pete” Meyer, MDA Consultants, Inc., Sarasota, Florida

n general, many journalists do not believe that it is possible to measure the quality of their work. This aversion would include most attempts at formal performance evaluation. It certainly would pertain to formal measures of culture – or the way they work together. Journalists aren’t the only ones who hold this conviction. Most creative and intellectual workers share this certainty. For example, many fine artists, scientists, professors, and even psychologists do not believe that their work fairly or accurately can be evaluated by outsiders. In this case, “outsiders” would include consultants and often also would include bosses – even those bosses who earlier in their careers were producers of creative work. In the work of the Learning Newsroom, we often encountered journalists who thought the Organizational Culture Inventory was at best spurious and at worst an attempt by outsiders to undermine the professionalism of the newsroom. I recall the journalist who upon hearing that his newsroom was oppositional and perfectionistic immediately

attacked the findings of the OCI. Essentially his comments were that journalists should be suspicious, contrarian and contentious. Further, he noted, it was somewhat astounding to hear outside consultants say that overwhelming attention to perfection and error-free product could be counterproductive, a view that was contrary to all that journalists believed. He seemed to believe that these reports were insults to the very values that led many to enter the profession. Sometimes the reaction said volumes more than the speaker intended. At other times, some would speak for the entire newsroom as they criticized the possibility that younger journalists were inclined to leave the profession, a seeming signal that emerged during analysis of the survey results over the 10 Learning Newsroom pilots. The consultants must be in error, the critics said, noting historic trends for younger staff to move to larger papers for more career opportunities. Although a few young people routinely decide journalism isn’t for them, the veterans held there is no exodus on the horizon. 68

Unfortunately, those comments were made to the consultants standing at the front of the room, and the critics were never in a position to observe the shaking of heads that showed newer journalists vehemently disagreed with their rejection of the hypothesis. We walked into newsrooms well aware of resistance and suspicion. We assumed that some would accept the findings of the OCI, some would withhold judgment until they heard more, and some would disagree. I for one was somewhat taken aback by the vehemence, even anger, of the third group. It did not take long to realize that the blunt attacks on the OCI results even were atypical for other knowledge workers. Many knowledge workers and creative workers are convinced that no one can judge or evaluate their work. For some journalists, this is dogma. The OCI deals with change â&#x20AC;&#x201C; change in culture, change in work relationships, change in who gets a say in how we will do our work in the future. Change based in external evaluation is hard to fathom and harder to accept. We tried to respond to the non-

believers with patience and understanding. We explained that change is difficult and often resisted. We once more described the scientific base for survey instruments. In the hope of convincing many but with the awareness that we were unlikely to convince all, we engaged those who did support the project. We went forward with our training. We also knew that most of the leaders in the newsroom believed in measurement and in quantitative data as one base for decision-making. Throughout we charged forward, not only knowing that measuring culture change was primary to our work but also knowing that some would forever remain convinced that no one can measure journalists, and by extension, the way they do their work. In the face of signals that readers find their work product increasingly irrelevant, such steadfast defense of the status quo seems unwise. Pierre â&#x20AC;&#x153;Peteâ&#x20AC;? Meyer is an industrial psychologist and consultant based in Sarasota, Fla. E-mail: pmeyermda@tampabay.rr.com

Pete Meyer sets up a small-group exercise during a Learning Newsroom session at the Asheville Citizen-Times.

“The Learning Newsroom got people thinking about changing their workplace in ways that could improve morale and that should lead to a better product.” KRIS SHERMAN

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Kris Sherman, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Washington

e work together at The News Tribune every day, Baby Boomers and Generation X and Y members. Some of us have more than 30 years’ experience at daily newspapering. Others have fewer than five. Veterans have lived through decades of change in the industry. We entered a business where typewriters, copy paper, paste pots, film cameras and light meters were everyday tools. We adapted to different ways of writing, new ways of thinking, an array of electronic newsgathering and news reporting tools. Younger staff members grew up with video games in their hands and knowledge of computer operating systems in their heads. They bring energy, technological expertise and an understanding of what younger people need to know to an industry that’s often slow to embrace new trends and reach out to new readers. In many ways, the challenge of the Learning Newsroom is not so different from our changing society. How do you mesh institutional knowledge and experience with the perspective and technological savvy of youth to move

the organization forward? It’s not an easy task. In Tacoma, many veterans were skeptical and mistrustful of the Learning Newsroom. They saw it as just another fad that would eat away their time in meetings with little result. Some younger staff members didn’t see the point, either. In some of our learning sessions, pointed comments from both ends of the age and experience spectrum made it clear there’s a gulf. And no matter how much you beg, cajole and tempt staff members with the prospect of a brighter future, some people will never join the game. Although our steering committee was a blending of experience levels, bringing the rest of the newsroom along was and remains difficult. Frustrating, yes. Impossible, no. On the steering committee, I, along with veteran colleagues John Gillie, David Wickert and Casey Madison, learned to pay greater attention to younger staff members like Janet Jensen, Kelly Kearsley, Nancy Nilles, Kate McEntee and Laura Gentry. The committee recognized that 70

many staff members have great ideas and early into the venture, we decided we needed to give them a canvas on which to help rewrite our mission. We scheduled two “Blank Page” sessions to accommodate both day and evening staffers and asked them to tell us what was missing from our print and Web pages. We got dozens of suggestions and acted on many. We refined the idea for a couple of additional staffwide conversations on young readers sessions and got even more ideas. The steering committee can’t take credit for staff writer Barbara Clements’ initiative in getting a popular real estate blog started, but we believe the Learning Newsroom atmosphere helped nurture it. “Grit City,” a blog featuring the perspectives of five under-30 staff members, grew directly out of our search for ways to reach younger readers. A weeklong Web internship, in which a reporter immerses himself or herself in learning how better to use electronic tools, came from our Web committee. The first reporter to dive in, Paul Sand, produced a popular Web and print story on wireless hot spots in the region. A list of goals for our daily Web and print products hangs near the morning news meeting table. It reminds us all to hold government accountable, to be innovative, to make better use of multimedia. Along the way, we learned that sometimes, on small issues, you can make changes and ask permission

later. One of our copy editors did that by dropping the longtime – and stodgy – fixture of Sunday news show topics from the paper. It wasn’t missed, but it left room for one more nugget of news. Our daily stocks report was scaled back from several pages to a highlights page. The decision to do this was made at executive levels, but it is one idea that was discussed in the Learning Newsroom. The fact it was done with little complaint from staff members shows how willing we are to accept change. The ocean liner is beginning to turn. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we learned to stop talking and take action. The Learning Newsroom got people thinking about changing their workplace in ways that could improve morale and that should lead to a better product. But lessons have to find applications quickly in concrete changes that impact Web and print audiences. It’s tempting to meet too much, talk an issue into oblivion and lose sight of the original goal. If improving your work life is your only ambition, you’ll let your audience slip away. You can’t innovate unless you’re willing to act and risk failure. That’s one lesson on which, we think, veterans and newer staff members all will agree. Kris Sherman is reporter at The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., and was a member of the Learning Newsroom steering committee. E-mail: Kris.Sherman@TheNewsTribune.com

Kris Sherman, standing, during a Learning Newsroom committee meeting.

One young journalist explains why he left the business and wonders: Could journalism’s farm team be drying up?

Pete LeBlanc, left, makes a point during a steering committee meeting at The Telegraph.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Pete LeBlanc, former staffer, The Telegraph, Nashua, N.H.

hallenges are there for journalism’s younger demographic. We come into the business knowing that getting the good story is about activity. Move your legs, talk to people and good things will come. And they do. Remember being 22ish and seeing your first byline? Yeah, you worked hard for that story. That’s the way it works, and that’s what good j-schools teach us to expect. What some of those j-schools often can’t teach are the things that go on inside the newsroom walls to slow things down. And seemingly too often, those wide-eyed Gen X-ers (like my 29year-old self) and Gen Y-ers are opting out of journalism because of them. Sometimes, from our point of view, the industry is a little backwards. The industry’s ability to adapt hardly exists, which leads to an indefinite future for journalism as we know it. Thirty years ago there was no Internet, less TV and more willingness of advertisers to toss money at papers. Still newsrooms seem to exhibit an apathetic view toward news preferences of the younger audiences they should target and messages of the

younger staffers who could help them with the task. Even during college, many of my peers hopped out of journalism, opting for public relations, marketing or otherwise random offerings knowing the long hours they put in as rookies would be easier to justify in the surety their job/career would be around in 5, 10, 30 years. Those of us who stuck it out and arrived in newsrooms ran up against practices we found at times stifling. The elders teach us to ask open-ended questions when out on assignment, but then not to when we’re back in the office. Yet when it comes time for wage freezes, budget cuts and layoffs, younger staff shoulder at least an equal share of the stress. Not all newsrooms are bad. In fact, at my last paper, The Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., Publisher Terry Williams’ door was open. And maybe more than he’d prefer, I marched in there with an idea or two. Same with my sports editor, Alan Greenwood, and others. In general, though, why would we want to work long, tough hours in an 72

industry that doesn’t allow entry into “the club” until we’ve been there forever? We weren’t raised to understand what “non-inclusive” means. If there’s an issue and we have an opinion or resolution, why wouldn’t we be able to voice it? While we can appreciate authority, we were also brought up knowing authority doesn’t always have the answer. Ironically, we were taught that our elders also believed the same at one time. In today’s environment, all ideas, no matter if they’re coming from an executive editor or an intern, should be evaluated for merit because journalism is becoming more irrelevant for readers and prospective journalists alike. I don’t know anybody my age with a newspaper subscription. Heck, few know the name of their local paper. Married in 2005, I looked at how little time my wife and I spent together. The Gen X-ers and Gen Y-ers I know seem to be learning a little from our parents, too, most of whom seem to be divorced at least partially because careers got in the way. One-hundredhour work weeks and misplaced priorities drove some of our parents to the point of irreconcilable differences at an alarming rate, and we’re trying to avoid that. Also, young journalists and our infamous teeny-tiny attention spans don’t want to measure the time it takes to accomplish something in calendar flips. In one of the newsrooms where I worked, I recommended changing the paint from institution cream to a more inviting color as well as bringing in a few plants and (gasp!) a couch for a café-like break area. I even volunteered to paint myself and buy the plants, but nobody with any authority could give me the go-ahead. The changes have since occurred, but it took years. Despite the open-door policy at The Telegraph, I parted ways with journalism early in 2006. The return on investment didn’t seem to be there for me. Looking back on my graduating class in 1999 at the University of New Hampshire, many have left for the

same reason. I can count 15 friends in my demographic who’ve voiced sentiments similar to mine in leaving newspapers. Sports fans, think this analogy: Journalism’s farm system is drying up. So what do I do now to satiate what newspapering didn’t? I’m in a highpressure sales job, trading deadlines for quotas. I still work long hours, but I’m home for dinner, holidays and weekends. And, being in sales, if I perform I get promoted. Plain and simple. My state, regional and national awards from my newspaper days look nice on my office wall, but they didn’t necessarily move me up any ladder or better my work schedule. I also own real estate, something my wife and I saw as a high potential for return on investment. For my peers and me, putting in the long hours for an industry that is so obviously broken, didn’t carry the same ROI. My friends and I who decided to leave the news business didn’t make decisions contingent on earning more money (a misconception by some) or fear of putting in a hard day’s work, but to cut our losses while there’s time. Pete LeBlanc, former sports copy editor and high school sports coordinator for The Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., also was a member of the steering committee during its first year in the Learning Newsroom program.

Our process, step-by-step â&#x20AC;&#x153;I used to think it was my job to deal with the crap. People feel empowered if they play a role in dealing with the crap. I finally got hold of my defensiveness and listened.â&#x20AC;? KATHLEEN RUTLEDGE, editor, Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Neb.

he Learning Newsroom journey was full of surprises for everyone involved. Time and again, editors said, “This work was not what I expected it to be.” (And generally, it was a favorable assessment.) Members of the frontline staff seemed startled when they saw they really were becoming architects of change. Even our experienced consultants gained a deeper understanding of what it takes to motivate journalists to change. This chapter provides the opportunity to outline in detail the process we followed but also to factor in the wisdom of hindsight. Some will find it hard to believe such a modest approach could foster multimedia initiatives, improve operations and increase reader interaction or that a five-point training curriculum could spark beat restructurings, launch new products and lead to thousands of additional training hours for journalists. Even the sponsors were surprised that the work could produce measurable improvement on a formal culture assessment in just 18 months. We saw deadline performance improve and ethics policies strengthened. We heard publishers hold up newsrooms to other departments as examples of collaboration and forward thinking The chance at such outcomes may entice other editors to try an approach such as the one tested by the Learning Newsroom. The prospect of working in an environment that’s less “top-down,” where the rank and file have a greater voice, will appeal to the frontline staff. Getting to such results requires building a broader knowledge base; that’s where the group training sessions come in. The topics we chose fostered more individual responsibility for fixing the conditions that trouble newsrooms now. More honest communication up, down and across the organization, for example, opens new avenues for changed practices.

Step one: Journalists need to know more Leaders must get comfortable with sharing more information and the frontline journalists must be willing to expand their thinking beyond traditional tasks associated with the practice of journalism. The experts would tell us the aggressive-defensive behaviors predominant in most newsrooms today make that difficult. The result is an environment that seems to dictate journalists act with extreme confidence at all times. Perhaps as a consequence of such bravado, we saw smart, experienced journalists in large newsrooms exhibit an astonishingly narrow world view. Some hadn’t kept up with important conversations around industry challenges, developments in multimedia technology or – closer to home – major economic developments in their own marketplace such as a real estate bust or blows to the retail base that could carry implications for their livelihoods. In one launch session, a journalist brushed off the notion he should be more aware of his newspaper’s market challenges, saying, “My job is to crank out news.” To which consultant Pierre “Pete” Meyer replied: “No, your job is to support the strategic goals of the organization.” The cost of needing to come off as superbly competent and self-sufficient can be personal. We saw many cases where individuals weren’t making the best use of available technology for essential tasks such as creating e-mail subfolders to organize messages worth saving or activating calendar reminder functions. 75

The ramifications of having essential voids in knowledge can be bigger. During a conversation on understanding how the newsroom – and newspaper – operates beyond one’s individual contributions, an honest twenty-something journalist said, “I don’t know what everybody else does. Heck, I barely know what’s expected of me.” Journalists can’t be expected to contribute to organizational solutions until they first recognize how their individual contributions fit into the bigger picture.

How we tailored the work to local needs Although every newsroom received the same five group training programs, several tools let us tailor the partnership to specific needs. Substantial data on market challenges, competition, recent change initiatives, readership efforts and training were collected in the program application. The project director’s introductory visit included numerous interviews with the frontline staff and the leadership. The formal culture survey got at expected behavior. A “career interests survey,” which allowed for narrative responses, was administered along with the culture diagnostic and helped complete the picture. The interest survey responses helped define local shadings in staff perceptions. It might have been the editor’s commitment to enterprise or watchdog reporting that showed through. Journalists in roles not directly contributing to the pipeline seemed to feel left out and perhaps jealous. In one such newsroom, a bureau reporter responded to a question asking how he might contribute more fully to the creative efforts of the newsroom: “By writing stories people want to read rather than those other journalists will admire.”

Graphic artist Karl Kahler of the San Jose Mercury News takes down ideas on possible new services and new revenue streams for newspapers in the future during a small-group exercise in a Learning Newsroom training session.

In other newsrooms, what bubbled up might have been perceptions of favoritism on special project work, a desire for more diversity in coverage of the community, the burden of outdated equipment, strains between word and visual journalists or the lingering aftershocks of a bitter contract dispute. All helped project leaders who were trying to grasp probable starting points for conversations around change. Every newsroom has its own needs. In some Learning Newsroom pilots, the staff was anxious to win management’s approval for its first online blog. In San Jose, there was talk of fewer blogs and chats because some believed this Silicon Valley pioneer in online news had gone overboard in that regard. Every newsroom was time-strapped but in one, the volume of messages around fatigue stood out as signaling a crisis. The work there had to emphasize finding smarter ways to get the paper produced in less time so people could go home earlier. Though our perfectionistic tendencies may make solutions to the time dilemma seem beyond reach, this newsroom reorganized its two daily budget meetings – including changing the order of business and who attended each – to better facilitate production and pick up time. Another newsroom canceled a superfluous weekly planning meeting for editors. Taking into account drive time for some bureau chiefs, the dozen editors picked up a cumulative 20 hours. Anticipating the mood in the room will be important to those charged with making a change initiative succeed. In addition to signaling potential tender spots, the advance survey was equally valuable in pointing up areas of opportunity. Some common messages across the surveys:

> Journalists take great pride in what they see as their ability to provide vital information of value to their community. > At work, they long for the freedom to “do my job the best way I know how” but also for more frequent feedback from both their supervisors and the top leader. > They want a greater understanding of how the newsroom and the overall organization operate. > Specifically, they want to know top leaders have a plan for ensuring the organization’s survival. > Many expressed a desire to know more about how the business side of the operation is doing, while still respecting that boundaries are necessary to protect the newsroom against influence. > Many realized that improving their workplace is up to them and want to help, citing untapped skills and energy that could be valuable to organizational success. > The conflicts that exist between their ideal working conditions and current practices generally have little to do with money. In short, journalists said in the surveys they were seeking the types of outcomes this work can deliver.

What the staff sees as obstacles As adept as journalists can be at challenging the status quo in their communities, they feel unable to do the same in their own workplaces. Survey responses made clear people had ideas they wanted to put forth about needed change – or even places where they wanted to offer time or knowledge – but felt 77

they couldn’t. One worrisome comment: “I’d like to help others in the sports department with their ethics, but I don’t know if they’d let me.” Consider the following e-mail message from a thoughtful young editor in Bloomington who was struggling to find a way to help a more senior colleague who seemed to him to be doing things the hard way: “This occurred to me one night as I sat with the copy desk and saw how they paginate: things that I would do or shortcut, they don’t; errors I’d back out of and avoid a computer blowup, they wouldn’t. I’m sure the same is true of things I do, too. … One of the most (if not the most) productive workers in the newsroom is, I think, one of the least efficient. It’s someone with so much skill, but everything she gets done is by sheer mule power, just dragging across the finish line. “The problem is that she is so stressed and overwhelmed, and feels like she can’t get out from under it. There have to be better ways of getting things done – maybe we won’t get more done, but what we are doing could be less stressful.” In another irony, those of us reviewing the surveys saw that in many cases where people were frustrated at not having an avenue to share skills they thought they could offer, they had colleagues across their own newsroom equally frustrated at not having a mastery of those same skills, or the availability of that guidance. Suggestions from the surveys often yielded a dozen or more topics – improving digital workflow and statistics for journalists, for example – that could become an easy starting point for the steering committee’s first conversations on improved training.

Ideal job scenarios not so far-fetched Datelines differed, but the need to address what’s ailing newsrooms in their organizational styles was clear in responses such as these to the question:

“Describe your ideal job.” Bakersfield: “An environment where people are open to suggestions and criticisms of their work, and they don’t take it personally.”

Lincoln: “An environment based on mutual respect and a common goal, leaving petty turf wars and personal histories behind.” Tacoma: “A positive environment in the newsroom, working with people who love their jobs.”

Bloomington: “Some people seem to be in a rut. Doing their job has become routine, and that attitude brings down the level of enthusiasm. There are people here with ideas for making the paper better, and their voices should be heard over the grumblings of the disenchanted.” Asked how he could help increase creativity and innovation in the newsroom, a Sarasota page designer hit the dilemma squarely: “Lose some of the jaded attitude and cynicism that have been beaten into me over the years; be allowed to come to work in a more productive and creative atmosphere instead of doing the same thing over and over because we’ve always done it that way.” A reporter in the same newsroom did likewise: “Try to start conversa78

tion about why we do things the way we do them and how we could change …. Right now no one seems to want input from anyone else other than ‘that’s a good story.’” Journalists indicated they would be willing to devote personal energy to find better ways to work. “[I could] help identify what stories the paper could do without; keep discussions and meetings focused and productive,” suggested one in Lincoln. In other trends, younger journalists in every pilot cited a desire for more opportunities and a greater respect for their input, and veterans everywhere said they had knowledge they’d be willing to share with newer staff members if asked, on topics including community history and, in one newsroom, “where to find a good mechanic.” In the ideal job scenarios, comments relating to the behavior of bosses showed up frequently, but not as frequently as those relating to the styles of coworkers. In Lincoln, for example, seven newsroom employees cited a leadership behavior at the top of their ideal list of considerations, including descriptions such as “caring and competent,” “who can make me better,” and “supports risk-taking and new ideas.” However, 11 put coworker issues at the top of their ideal lists, with remarks such as “feel like part of a team,” “good collaboration,” “cooperative atmosphere,” “everybody gets along” and “respect of my peers.” As borne out by other polls of journalists, salary matters were cited below other workplace concerns. Generally, anything related to compensation ranked in fourth or fifth place on the lists. Desire for a more flexible work schedule or a better “work-life balance” topped the list in a few newsrooms, but the desire for more “freedom” or “independence” was No. 1 in four and in the top three conditions sought in nine. Responses in this vein included: “flexibility to decide what you do,” “freedom to pursue tasks as I see fit,” “freedom to pursue my own ideas,” “someplace where every little detail is not dictated to me.” Or, as someone in San Jose put it, “Trust that I can do the job and will do it right.” An environment that supports creativity, presents challenges and offers the feeling of doing work that makes a difference, sometimes referred to as “important journalism,” also were often mentioned.

Our training agenda Over its three-year life, the Learning Newsroom delivered 18,560 hours of training to the 928 journalists who participated in the 10 pilot partnerships. The five four-hour sessions presented over the course of a year introduced new concepts and suggested new practices. But as previously stated, project organizers consider the lectures far from the most significant ingredient in the formula for change. Important conversations started by the steering committee work, training improvements and the level of leadership commitment were more vital. Still, we would encourage other editors to consider the Learning Newsroom’s training curriculum as a good one for getting at triggers for change. To those who would go a similar route, here are some strong suggestions around logistics: We found four hours the minimum timeframe necessary to accommodate the elements we considered essential to each session. Those were: a) small-group exercises, b) multiple opportunities for dialogue throughout the training (not just at the end) and c) the generation of lists of opportuni79

The Learning Newsroom Experience A typical progression for the pilot partnership

In our “management training from everyone” approach, organizational development consultants trained the full staffs in all but the two largest newsrooms, where attendance was capped at 130 people.

Six Training Sessions ● Survey results ● Systems & Process analysis ● Communication ● Innovation ● Business literacy ● Time management/Workout APPLICATION: Editor applied for program; review included look at all training offered staff in previous 2 years

(Order varied)

Organizational Culture Inventory survey repeated at 18 months

LAUNCH VISIT: Met with department heads; selected steering committee

Acceptance into program

●●●● PRE-LAUNCH Pre-launch staff surveys

PROJECT DIRECTOR MADE SITE VISIT: Staff interviews, meeting with publisher, project planning

●●●●●●●●●●●● YEAR 1

● YEAR 2

Project director visited for work with steering committee

PARALLEL TRACK: Revision of traditional newsroom training calendar to make training more strategic and measurable 80

Training plan improvements, ongoing committee work

ties that will arise from conversations on each topic. It’s a big investment, but organizers will need to understand from the start that engaging the room is much more important than the words on any slide. And that takes time. Journalists will have to hear repeated many times the invitation to change and assurances their energy will not be wasted. They also – predictably – will require food and at least two bio breaks at each session. In fact, if your staff is large enough to necessitate multiple repeats of the same session, count on them to compare notes on the menu with their counterparts who attend the others. If there are cookies to accompany the sandwiches at one, there must be cookies at all. The outline below will cite some typical outcomes and follow-ups as examples. But it bears repeating that every newsroom’s experience will be different, and none of this can be ordered by management. Because the goal is to change the newsroom from the bottom up, the frontline staff plays the greater role in determining what happens.

Session 1: Make the case for changing the workplace environment in strategic ways, drawing from organizational theory and successful makeovers in other industries. Explain the risk of continuing in the styles evident in most newsrooms today. Cover any survey results in this first session, using staff feedback on what should change and ways the newsroom could work smarter. State and re-state leadership’s commitment to finding better ways. Outline how a yearlong effort at change would play out.

Session 2: Train in how to improve communication in the newsroom and throughout the organization. This is a logical place to focus the first energy around change. Topics should include leadership communication styles that foster greater engagement, how various management structures can facilitate or inhibit the free flow of information in an organization, what is known about how various personality types react to different styles of communication, effective conflict resolution, best practices in giving and receiving feedback, and qualities of effective coaches. Commit to communicating better in ways that matter most, including: job responsibilities; performance feedback; marketplace competition; and the goals, vision, mission and values of the organization and its leaders. Because some of the unproductive behaviors dominating newsrooms today inhibit effective business communication, it is the perfect place to let the staff begin to emphasize changed practices.

> Follow-up work by the committee might include: a survey of staff on which modes of communication are working and which are least effective. > Common areas for improvement: Access to the news budgets; the story development process, such as interactions between reporters and assigning editors; better ways to keep up with the staff through the work day; photo and other art assignment processes. > Long term, this can lead to: More frequent interactions between leaders and staff, better orientation processes, smarter thinking around who 81

attends which meetings, fewer disputes between word people and visual people, and better use of communication technologies.

Session 3: Train in business literacy to give the newsroom staff a base of current knowledge as an underpinning for taking on a greater voice in suggesting new directions. Recruit the publisher and department heads in finance, advertising, circulation, online, production and human resources to make brief presentations. Ask the publisher to offer the “30,000-foot view” of challenges and opportunities, and the other executives to share their top three or four most pressing challenges. The guest speakers should be prepped for their roles. You’re not seeking a “day in the life of advertising” presentation or inviting “you need to understand how hard we work” sermons. The presentations must be brief, headlinestyle introductions to the concerns and opportunities foremost in these leaders’ minds. Hard numbers and trend lines covering five years are valuable, but except for a few such graphics, speakers should not rely on slide presentations. If company edicts prohibit disclosure of specific figures, percentage of change will do. A speaker will be successful when the newsroom’s questions require more time than the presentation. He or she can add value by stating the direct implications for the newsroom of any challenge or opportunity being considered. The emphasis should be on the audience. > Follow-up work by the committee might include: Requests for brown bag sessions to learn more about market research or other resources journalists commonly didn’t know existed. Sarasota’s newsroom asked for a tour of the press facility. That newsroom heard how its circulation department had recently struggled with and then stemmed high carrier turnover rates, that there are 109 competitors for advertiser dollars in the newspaper’s market, and that if the paper is 30 minutes late, 500 home delivery subscribers get a late paper or none at all if carriers have to get to other jobs. > Common areas for improvement: Sticking with the Sarasota example, the three business literacy sessions there yielded flip chart pages with 71 questions for more information or news staff ideas on opportunities to be pursued. Journalists wanted to apply what they learned to take a fresh look at the allocation of newsgathering resources, to consider new ways to use print to drive Web consumption and to ask questions such as: “What should we be alerting readers about throughout the day?” Several newsrooms immediately gained access to weekly or daily stats for top stories read online. > Long term, this can lead to: New products (see the Outcomes section on page 139 for several specifics in Sarasota), new ways of interacting with consumers, greater appreciation for the need to experiment with other platforms without losing sight of the print core, and journalists becoming more skilled in making the business case for the changes they want to see. At the end of a San Jose training session, a staffer said, “Almost everything I heard today was something I didn’t know.” In some two dozen individual sessions on business literacy, not one staffer left saying he or she felt journalistic values were threatened by these conversations. Bethany Nolan, a Bloomington reporter, talked about broadening perspectives: “Many of us are used to thinking ‘Here’s what I’m working on. Here’s my great story.’ And I think this, for me, has kind of opened up that world to 82

think about The Herald-Times as a whole instead of just my newsroom and here’s what we’re doing tomorrow or next week or three weeks from now. What’s happening with our marketing? What’s happening with our ad revenue? How’s that doing?”

Session 4: Train in how other industries have found ways to create a fertile field for innovation. This topic followed perfectly on the heels of the business literacy sessions. In an example that held obvious appeal for overworked journalists, newsrooms heard that engineers at 3M must prove they “waste” 10 percent of work time engaged in thinking big thoughts. The flip side of the coin is that every 3M division must also show 25 percent of its annual revenue is derived from products that didn’t exist five years ago. An expert in the field of organizational development can spark new thinking in the newsroom with examples of how other organizations have changed practices or restructured to improve products or services for consumers. Learning Newsroom training sessions here covered myths around innovation (such as creative thinking comes only from highly creative personality types) and lessons learned through experiments at radical change in companies including GE, Saturn, Microsoft and Google. As journalists are introduced to the various roles to be played among a team charged with innovation, the need for a quicker pace, greater attention to collaboration and more constructive styles of communication become even more apparent. > Follow-up by the committee might include: Increased training in technology needed to deliver the news in new ways. Tacoma created a weeklong Web internship. It was not uncommon shortly after this session for the project facilitators to hear of blogs and podcasts being launched and some stale content dropped. Sometimes – for better or worse – the frontline staff did so with an eye toward “asking forgiveness later.” In one pilot, just days after this session, a veteran real estate writer launched a blog that became an immediate hit. Her supervisors raised an eyebrow, but the feature wasn’t pulled. In the same newsroom, a page designer killed the Sunday television talk show guest lineup for the sake of what he believed would be content of greater reader value. Not one reader called. In Sarasota, an interesting argument at one of the first Learning Newsroom sessions centered on the question: Are bloggers journalists? A traditionalist said, “As karaoke singers are to opera stars.” Younger staffers overwhelmingly responded they considered such a stance both arrogant and evidence of the attitudes that can cripple innovative efforts to relate to today’s younger news consumers, who have different expectations. > Common areas for improvement: In almost every newsroom, the innovation session disclosed radical rethinking already under way elsewhere in the organization. Projects on the drawing board sometimes picked up steam and launched more quickly with additional support from the newsroom. We saw increased attention to engaging more frequently with younger news consumers and greater appreciations for ideas from younger staffers. > Longer term, this can lead to: New content focused on younger readers, as was the case with some new feature section fronts in Lincoln, or wholesale revamps of newspaper Web sites to build in more visual and audio offerings, as was the case in Hamilton and Nashua. Bakersfield had been a pioneer 83

in Web innovation for years before its Learning Newsroom experience and retains that status today. San Jose backed up its news day to accommodate more frequent Web updates

Session 5: Train staff in systems and process analysis. People in many other professions are in the habit of systematically analyzing the way they work in order to fix bottlenecks, kill wasted steps or stop doing things that no longer make sense. In the face of increased pressure to become a 24-hour news operation, journalists want to know, “What gives?” among current obligations. Reporter Phil Yost put it well during a training session at the San Jose Mercury News. Noting the cumulative impact of requirements to file for print and sometimes multiple online deadlines, an increased emphasis on maps and other visual storytelling tools, and the need for technological savvy in things like database searches, he said, “The expectation now is, ‘Could you do this, and could you do this, and could you do this, too?’” This session can offer a route to streamlined operations. An organizational development expert can help staff view production of the newspaper in sufficiently small pieces so they can begin to discern what’s broken. Having staff direct the conversation is key. Managers could never build as accurate a model of how, for example, copy flows through the sports desk on Sunday nights, as the people who do the work. By this point in the Learning Newsroom training year, a greater appreciation emerged for the personal impact of our bad habits. Frequently at these sessions empathy was voiced for the plight of the assigning editor and other overworked mid-level managers. Many of the improvements went right to their bottom-line needs. It wasn’t that top leaders were negligent. For example, in San Jose, the staff pointed out that Managing Editor Dave Satterfield asks for feedback and possible ramifications around planning decisions during every daily editors’ meeting. It’s just that “What do you think?” often fails to get a response from people feeling the press of that evening’s copy flow. Separate conversations are needed. > Follow-up by the committee might include: Post-mortems where the full staff takes part in critiquing how the paper did on major projects such as election or Super Bowl coverage in order to do better at its next opportunity, revisions to photo assignment forms to make them more valuable, improved electronic systems for assigning art, more efficient meetings, broader awareness of the multiple deadlines around nightly copy flow, and numerous other operational fixes. > Common areas for improvement: Journalists have no difficulty citing what’s wrong with the way things work now, for instance, assignments for nextday content that come late in the day. This one was on the list in every newsroom from Nashua to San Jose. Based on the particulars, fixes could include one or more of the following: better planning earlier in the day, perhaps by staggering assigning editor start times; addressing mixed signals that can occur through reliance on multiple communications technologies across a newsroom; a move to more informal, briefer “standup” meetings to save time but preserve the maestro approach to news; addressing uneven spots in the copy flow. The process analysis work also proved useful in dispelling myths. In two 84

newsrooms, the staff was certain there were “too many late changes in the 1A lineup.” The committee tracked data for several weeks and found, in fact, there were relatively few, and where late changes did occur, they generally pertained to wire stories. In another, there was a belief that top editors frequently assigned stories. Again, this proved false. > Longer term, this can lead to: Improvements in performance management systems. This session pointed up some crucial voids in the structures intended to set expectations and measure how journalists are doing at their jobs. Job descriptions, performance evaluations and rewards systems haven’t kept up with the pace of change. It’s only fair for journalists today to be asking questions such as, “How much time should I devote to blogging?” and “Would you prefer one 1A story or five small items for online?” One newsroom tackled an update of 12-year-old evaluation forms that included questions on whether the employee was adequately trained on completing paper timecards and servicing the photo copier.

Session 6: Train the staff in time management and introduce former General Electric Co. CEO Jack Welch’s “workout” concept for team problem-solving. This session introduced a long list of do’s and don’ts from the best practices of highly organized people: things like removing clutter from the desk and ensuring meetings last only as long as necessary rather than striving to fill increments of 30 minutes or an hour. Our goal was to offer a laundry list of tips with the caveat that we would never advocate following all. The real value came in the audience’s realization that there are no magic bullets on time management. Some people just make the conscious decision to organize their daily, weekly, monthly and annual activities better than others. Time management was an interesting training topic for project organizers. Frankly, the project team thought time might be better spent on other concepts. But it was included by popular demand. Indeed, in some of the early newsrooms, there was great expectation around its arrival. We sometimes worried, “They’re hoping for too much from this.” We were as surprised as anyone to hear afterward that in some newsrooms the office’s biggest packrats responded by clearing out the fire hazard stacks of paper around their desks. In another newsroom, we got the feedback, “This could have been a check-list handout.” We agreed. But the conversation always proved a good setup for workout. In that exercise, the staff worked in small groups to suggest areas of coverage or practices that were no longer the best use of the newsroom’s time – not things that should be fixed, but practices that should stop. A starting list of suggestions from the crowd might include things like: Eliminate incremental court coverage, stop covering the festival of the week, kill anniversary special sections, drop the society column, abandon the reader advocacy program. Those examples make clear that the group almost always starts with totally self-centered goals. “Kill the weekend staffing rotation system” might be one suggestion, with the unspoken intent, “so I don’t have to do mine.” Workout often exposed unrealistic expectations, but the groups nearly always self-corrected by the end of the process. (There will be more on that phenomenon later.) > Follow-up by the committee might include: More realistic suggestions ended with killing duplicated steps related to production, or content that has run its course such as the syndicated bridge column. The small-group work 85

included cross-departmental reviews for potential impact. The top leadership was always in the room for the training, so it was easy for steering committees to follow up quickly after these sessions and get final signoff. > Common areas for improvement: Replacing some traditional text content with wire-generated graphics, reshuffling the daily schedule to fill production voids and break log jams, carving time out of meetings, and killing repetitive content such as the use of a photo three times in two teasers and with the story. > Longer term, this can lead to: In all candor, workout in its truest sense proved difficult for newsrooms. Many “let’s drop …” sentiments evolved to “let’s do less of …” process improvements, some rightfully but some due to tentativeness. We did see newsrooms trim stock listings and TV listings and migrate some content to the Web site, though these decisions often were influenced by economic factors rather than as a step toward radical change. No doubt conversations here contributed to some process-focused, 18inch government meeting stories or equally long sports game stories being shortened or converted to fact boxes because outcomes were already widely known by readers. Despite lots of talk about how those chestnuts are of declining value to readers, we didn’t see any newsroom make a wholesale commitment to stop producing them.

The phenomenon of self-correction Training in the sequence shown above supported our mission of changed practices in the Learning Newsroom pilots in many ways. At the start of the process, there was clear evidence that journalists are generally not in the habit of thinking beyond the scope of their daily duties or pitching ideas so they can elicit a favorable response. Often in the first training sessions and in early committee meetings, journalists spoke with passion but also immaturity. They wanted to stop coverage that was “lame” or “a waste of my time.” We saw attacks on “festivals just because we covered them last year,” obituaries, special sections and other content journalists don’t like to produce or don’t read themselves. Such reviews almost always reveal the misperceptions or lack of knowledge of those who consider themselves afflicted. Sometimes there was the false impression of an editor mandate that some group always be covered. Or journalists didn’t know the content ranked high with large readership segments or helped bring in major advertising revenue. During one launch visit, a veteran journalist suggested that rather than group training, the newsroom’s energy would better be spent “finding a nonprofit to buy us and restore us to full staffing.” Steering committees quickly saw the value in promoting broad perspectives. To maintain their value and independence, they had to focus on finding strategies that would equip the organization for a successful future. In the early weeks of the venture, editors had some difficulty in trusting that the frontline staff would always act in the best interests of preserving their new voice. Thankfully, we saw that prove to be the case in every newsroom. Kathleen Rutledge, the editor in Lincoln, spoke at the final symposium at API about the start of the process. “I might have appeared calm on the outside, but inwardly I was flipping out.” She learned the value of not immediately pointing out why something might not be a good idea and the value of trying 86

to get staff buy-in before making decisions. “I used to think it was my job to deal with the crap. People feel empowered if they play a role in dealing with the crap. I finally got hold of my defensiveness and listened.” Mike Connelly, executive editor in Sarasota, likewise saw the benefit of pushing down some of the decision-making responsibility. “My new four favorite words?” he asked at the symposium. “That’s not my decision.” By the final reports from the workout exercise, the most self-serving mandates for “stop doing” had nearly always morphed to more reasonable middle ground. “Well, of course we can’t kill all festival coverage, but we can get more selective in setting the bar,” was a commonly voiced sentiment. And it all happened in the course of one four-hour training session. When an entire work force begins to take greater responsibility, day in and day out, for its own happiness, change is apparent. After a year at checking unreasonably suspicious behavior and combative tendencies, and communicating more honestly with their colleagues, journalists proved to be far more reasoned in their negotiation and more successful at seeing their ideas become reality.

If we knew then … The schedule here evolved over the course of the Learning Newsroom project. Not all newsrooms were trained in that sequence. It also breaks out communication training as a separate session from the one delivering the survey responses. In our training calendars, these two were combined. Ideally, they would be separate events. Additionally, we would suggest two other changes:

> Insert a half-day steering committee retreat between training sessions on communication and business literacy to coach the new change agents in tools to help with their effectiveness, such as meeting management tips. > Add a final work session with the committee after the last training session in order to offer final tips on carrying the work forward. Every newsroom helped us hone the process and learn from their experiences in this program. Bakersfield Californian Assistant Managing Editor Lois Henry offered that newsroom’s steering committee control over a share of the office training budget. Her move inspired leaders in other pilots to do the same. Tacoma’s top editors set a smart standard for communication between their steering committee and middle managers by giving the frontline staff a formal five-minute spot for Learning Newsroom updates on the agenda at the weekly team leaders’ meeting. San Jose’s steering committee upped its size mid-way through the training year to add two middle managers to its ranks. All of these were smart moves that furthered progress. Here are other guideposts that might serve sponsors of other newsroom change efforts:

> At the start: Leaders should reiterate frequently their desire for changed practices and the invitation for greater engagement from the front lines. They should encourage and support change agents and then be prepared to wait. 87

> At about two months: A steering committee of frontline staff will likely still be struggling to get its act together. Leaders will need to resist any inclination to step in and direct but may need to smooth over supervisors’ complaints of “wasted time” and ask them to respect the learning curve. > At about four months: We saw a discernible quickening of the pace after the business literacy training. Communication between the steering committee and top leaders should become more frequent. Some newsrooms found it valuable to schedule check-ins about twice a month. You should be seeing early outcomes. Leaders must celebrate success. > At about six months: With its legs under it and a lesser likelihood ideas from the frontlines will be overwhelmed, the steering committee should begin to more formally fold middle managers into its work. For example, supervisors with a stake in particular initiatives should be invited to meetings where they will be discussed. The group also should be formally tracking and marketing its accomplishments to encourage broader buy-in. Work toward improving the traditional training calendar should have begun, likely under the direction of a subcommittee. > At about eight months: If mid-managers have bought in, the ideas for change will reflect bigger thinking, and another evolution will be seen. > At about 10 months: Committee members are likely beginning to show fatigue and will need encouragement. They should create a plan for their own succession including a process for selecting replacements (subcommittee leaders will be the apparent successors) and a calendar to let a few veterans depart at a time so the entire process doesn’t have to begin anew. > At about 12 months: The first wave of committee veterans should segue off after attending a few meetings with their replacements. Finally, it helps when facilitators strive to model the sought-after behavior. On many a flip chart we took down crazy ideas, off-point remarks, redundancies, and just plain angry comments. But the goal was to open conversation, not to correct the audience. Sometimes in recaps after the session, sponsoring editors wondered why we’d even write down such far-fetched comments. Our consultant industrial psychologist Pierre “Pete” Meyer tells the story of the kindergarten class where the teacher says, “Who wants to tell me about their summer vacation?” A child raises a hand and says, “I love dinosaurs.” The teacher says, “We’re not talking about dinosaurs, we’re talking about vacations.” The imprint is made: If I contribute, I might be embarrassed.

Beyond the first year A common question from leaders is, “When will a greater comfort with change become so ingrained that we no longer need a steering committee or any other formal structure to help us move faster?” The project team of the Learning Newsroom would say that our experiences indicate a year is not enough time to change the DNA of a newsroom. Decades-old habits die hard. Efforts at changing workplace styles faltered quickly when committees scaled down their profile. 88

We saw greater success in year two where:

> Steering committees remained intact > New hires were formally introduced to the concepts through revamped orientation processes or mentor programs. > Commitments were made to annual training minimums, with a set goal for each staffer member. > Training and development efforts were tied to performance management systems. > Efforts began to upgrade performance management systems – the annual evaluations, for example – to reflect and reward sought-after changes in behavior and further solidify “what success looks like” in a new environment with new expectations. At least one pilot saw the need to create more structures, not fewer, to support change following its training year. Bob Zaltsberg, editor of The HeraldTimes in Bloomington, said in 2007 he hopes to create a post for a newsroom change guru. “A lot of our success with training has come because we designated a training coordinator to wake up everyday thinking about opportunities and tracking what we’ve done,” he said. “We need to do the same thing with innovation. While it’s everyone’s job to be creative and innovative, moving the big ideas forward will be more likely if somebody – like with training – is responsible for thinking every day about how to do that.”

A major a-ha moment With all the focus on business goals, better communication and operational fixes, sponsors can expect to hear the question: “Are we going to continue to do these things or are we going to improve workplace culture?” In one pilot in particular, a very effective committee that was engaging big segments of newsroom staff and fostering change left and right argued this point among themselves for months. They didn’t realize that by doing one, they were accomplishing the other. It was one of many questions where journalists came to recognize the right answer isn’t an either/or proposition, it’s both.

Other FAQs about the Learning Newsroom process

Q A

Q A Q A

Are the pilot newspapers seeing increased circulation or readership as a result of this work?

We don’t have the time or resources to train everyone; wouldn’t it work as well to give this charge to managers?

Bloomington and Corpus Christi cite gains both in print and online and attribute some of the credit to their involvement in the Learning Newsroom program. However, readership growth was not an outcome we said we had to see to consider this work a success because circulation can be affected by many factors, including price and labor issues, beyond the control of the newsroom.

Not if the goal is a more bottom-up organization, with greater engagement and more ideas from the frontlines. What about training representative samples from all departments? The Readership Institute’s 2001 research on culture in 90 newspapers signaled an overwhelmingly defensive and entrenched culture exists in most newsrooms today and that’s what we found to be true. With that in mind, we feared training only a few people would cause them to be overwhelmed once they got back to their desks and faced the reality of their surroundings. In the two largest newsrooms (pilots 9 and 10) where attendance had to be capped (at 130 versus staffs of 321 and 179, respectively), we opted for taking whole departments and unfortunately had to exclude others.

Q A

How about revenue growth? There are anecdotal examples of Learning Newsroom projects leading to new revenue (See Outcomes on page 135). Every newsroom learned to “make the business case” for the changes it sought so we hope to see more.

Q A

Why wasn’t it a “learning news organization” program? The Knight Foundation funded the research as part of a training and development program for journalists. There simply were not funds to train every employee.

Q A

Who did the best?

Q A

I’ve heard most of this before. Haven’t these ideas been around a while? Yes! Some have been with us for decades. We would never say our approach is the only approach, or even the best approach to creating a learning organization. We were charged with testing a curriculum to improve newsroom culture and increasing training for journalists. We are seeing promising early results on both missions.

This was research and every pilot exceeded our expectations. Every newsroom had several dozen positive outcomes, so there were only greater and lesser successes. There is no single “best.”

OUR FEARS Selective applications vs. the whole enchilada. Each of the training modules has value but their power in triggering change will become most evident when they are offered in the sequence suggested, with a committee structure to carry through in starting conversations and finding applications, and with a fully supportive leadership team.

Some will translate process improvement as a route to greater efficiencies and as a tool for cost-cutting. This would be a mistranslation and would turn staff off. The organization would be worse off than when it began.

Leaders will start down this path but when other concerns seem more pressing, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll stop. Few training initiatives carry the risk of making matters worse if they are interrupted. This is one. Industrial psychologists would advise that holding out the prospect of a more constructive workplace, inviting staff to engage in building it and then abandoning the effort would leave the leader with a more angry and disengaged workforce than had the effort never begun.

Committees learn to sidestep narrow agendas and make the business case for change.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Susan Rife, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Sarasota, Florida

t was a phenomenon we labeled “circling the drain,” a highly honed skill among journalists to engage in long gripe sessions, revisiting old hurts and perceived slights over and over, wasting time and accomplishing nothing. For our Learning Newsroom experience to have any value or concrete outcomes, it became clear to the steering committee in short order that we’d have to find ways to break free. Who knew when we started the Learning Newsroom process that we’d spend so much time listening to people grind their personal axes? In the group training sessions and in our committee work sessions, we had to find more businesslike (dare we call it “adult”?) ways of proposing change. At committee work sessions, it quickly became evident that strong meeting management and a strict agenda were helpful in conquering the circular bitch session. It’s tough to interrupt a colleague and get the conversation opened up again, but some of us on the committee learned quickly that the key to not being driven mad by a pointless meeting was to stay on

task and to refocus the conversation on solutions. “Is this a problem we should work on?” and “Could you boil this down to an actionable item?” became useful phrases. Our emphasis had to be on finding issues that impacted a large segment of staff or improved content, not employee welfare topics. Early on, the steering committee spent valuable chunks of time listening to a single staffer push for free coffee and bottled water for the newsroom. The bureaus had it; why couldn’t we in the downtown office? We’d get momentum on an issue of greater concern, and then get stuck for another 15 minutes as someone argued that the lack of internal WiFi access was confounding his reporting. We veered off track in another meeting discussing hurricanes and how reporters could care for their pets. Breaking free meant asking tough questions of the eternal complainer, making sure the group reached consensus on the kernel of the issue (if there was one), then moving on. Along with becoming more assertive, two of the training sessions 92

Our training sessions also uncovered a hunger for a committee that would stay focused on the future of the industry and creative solutions to challenges we all face. helped us hone skills as well. The business literacy sessions were key to our developmental process, as the newsroom suddenly saw the operation of the newspaper as a whole rather than as a collection of parts. Representatives from other departments shared challenges. The sessions yielded dozens of questions from the newsroom about areas where we wanted more information about virtually every aspect of the operation: Readership trends, circulation growth areas, the company’s strategic plan, content delivery options, the business model for future newspaper advertising and so forth. Learning Newsroom facilitators began urging that we become skilled in making the “business case for change.” We recognized that we’d need to come up with more compelling reasons for change than “because we don’t like this anymore.” Our steering committee meetings eventually began to center on marketing our ideas, including information on what would be gained and/or lost with the change. We got better at making a well-reasoned pitch to the boss. In the final training session we explored the concept of “workout,” breaking into groups to come up with steps in the operation or areas of content we believe we can no longer justify as the best use of our time and resources. Subgroups often began with a list of things we hate to do: covering the weather, coming up with endless festival and holiday stories. There was plenty of loud laughter as people ran through their lists of work they’d rather went away, either because it’s boring to do or it’s hard to

come up with a fresh approach. But over the course of the exercise, conversation evolved. We suggested alternative approaches to a seemingly tedious task – weather coverage, for instance – rather than abandoning it completely. Maybe the room was reflecting a lot of individual progressions from self-centered gripes to thinking centered on those who matter most: readers. Our training sessions also uncovered a hunger for a committee that would stay focused on the future of the industry and creative solutions to challenges we all face. That committee, called H-T Plus 5, reflecting an emphasis on looking five years out, is now pursuing customer-service issues that go beyond the newsroom. Our committee finally gained traction when we recognized that success was dependent not on coming up with gee-whiz solutions, but with individuals and small groups taking ownership of impactful ideas, developing a reasoned pitch and pushing them toward action. Susan Rife is books editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Sarasota, Fla. E-mail: Susan.Rife@HeraldTribune.com

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It’s time for a holistic rethinking of the structure of newsrooms in order to facilitate change, innovation and reinvention.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Toni Antonellis, president, TSA & Co., Atlanta, Georgia

t was clear in every Learning Newsroom that the daily machine eats our creative lunch. Our Learning Newsroom partners were never lacking for new ideas. Many of them were keenly aware of the external factors stealing eyeballs and audience share. They had ideas for solutions, but they just got sucked up in the black hole of the traditional newsroom structure. I was reminded in each newsroom of a time when I was working as vice president of strategy and organizational development for The Arizona Republic. Our CEO threw out a big goal: earn 20 percent of our top line revenue growth from new products. We were an aggressive, somewhat fearless leadership team so of course we thought, “We can do that.” Not. It didn’t take long to figure out that we weren’t going to get there with only a small percentage of our resources (time, money and people) spent on new product development. We needed a structural shift to accommodate innovation and growth. Many of our partners in the Learning Newsroom pilots were smart

to point out that the way they allocated resources wasn’t helping to further the strategic focus. They recognized even some of the most long-held practices – for example, the timing of the afternoon budget meeting or the hours they staffed the newsroom – did not advance them into the new world of news and information gathering and delivery. It was universal. Every newsroom believed growing audience meant growing digital and putting out the best local print product. From my experience, that’s an almost impossible goal if you don’t holistically rethink the structure. This is not about throwing a couple of bodies at digital. But it’s also not about blowing up the joint. It’s about creating a strategic direction and systematically moving resources around. Once you start the process and your intent is clear to all, it almost becomes organic. How far and how fast? It depends on how much momentum you’ve built. If you’ve made lots of success changes already, then some radical redesign may be exactly right. If not, then radical may be very risky. I think our partners would say that 94

regardless of where you are on that continuum, some structural shift is absolutely necessary – now. So what you really want to know is: What should that look like? Where’s the model? Who’s done it? The trouble is there is no one perfect model to copy. A female staffer in one of our newsrooms used an expression that I just loved. She said we “circle the drain” when we have conversations, meaning we talk and share and talk some more without any conclusion. That’s just what you’d be doing if you spent a lot of energy trying to find anyone with the perfect answers for your own organization. That said, there are a lot of smart people making progress on this, there are other mature industries that have remade themselves to draw ideas from. And there is the competition. Look at them all, but at the end of the day the best

structure for your newsroom will come from asking some questions like:

> What core values or guiding principles do we need to maintain? > What’s our strategic direction? > What audience do we want to grow? Maintain? > What does that audience want? How and when? > What work matters most to grow that audience? > What work matters least to grow that audience? > How do we compete? > How fast do we need to move before we lose opportunity? > If we were building a news organization today, what would it look like? Toni Antonellis is president of TSA & Co. in Atlanta. E-mail: ToniAntonellis@EarthLink.net

Toni Antonellis takes down journalists’ suggestions for tasks or content they believe the newspaper should abandon during a “workout” training session at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in late 2006.

Don’t just fill positions, make every hire or promotion count. Use selection opportunities to make progress toward newsroom and organizational goals.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Toni Antonellis, president, TSA & Co., Atlanta, Georgia

s a non-journalist and someone who has consulted to numerous industries, it was a standout moment for me to observe how passionate our Learning Newsroom partners were about preserving the ability to do great journalism. It was also very clear that these days, especially, every seat in the newsroom mattered. In the training room, the visionaries, the engaged, the disinterested and the curmudgeons all influenced the process and progress, sometime positively, sometimes not. At first, the connection between doing great journalism, creating a constructive culture and bolstering management practices was a bit mushy for some of our partners. And honestly, more than a few eyes rolled and voices moaned when we introduced topics like staffing and performance management. Those reactions from folks who’d already told us they were resource-deprived and needed more leadership, more innovators and new skill sets were, shall we say, surprising. One way to get the newsroom to stop swirling around the lack of resources and to make the link that

getting the most of those two systems – staffing and performance management – can make life better for journalists is to pose questions like these: If we were staffing a new newsroom today, what would it look like? What work do we need to do to realize our business goals? How would we maximize every position to do the work we want and need to do? The a-ha moments usually happened when, in drilling down into the conversation, most people realized how little time they’ve invested in articulating the kind of talent and personal attributes they need in today’s newsroom. Generally speaking, most of our partners needed to shore up (or create) foundational management practices. Things like building best practices around selection, performance management and communication were among the biggest needs. Still, selection may be one of the diciest areas. With resources stretched thin, everyone’s hair is on fire. The tendency is to just fill the position, promote that person or move someone to a new job. I’d like to think one of the out96

comes of the Learning Newsroom was to shift thinking around the importance of staffing decisions. I believe there is a greater understanding that today’s business climate demands making thoughtful and even sometimes difficult choices. I also think our partners realize the importance of approaching an internal selection with the same energy and precision with which they approach external hires. Another observation was that while most newsrooms have standards around which they measure staff performance, they rarely use those standards as a starting point when filling positions. Think about it. If you intend to hold someone accountable for a certain set of performance standards, why wouldn’t you flip them around and use them as the baseline for a hiring profile? Great hiring profiles are not job descriptions. Those are often outdated documents better suited to satisfy human resource needs. Great hiring profiles include answers to questions like:

sibilities are essential? > Who will this person interact with and what are their needs? > How do we want this position to influence the culture? Maintain things? Shake it up? Some tips on selection:

> Zero-base – that is, approach from scratch – every hiring decision. Make sure the position you’re filling furthers the strategic direction of the newsroom. > Use the hiring profile to ask the right interview questions. > Set up an interview team and have individuals pose questions using the same criteria and then have the team compare notes. > Consider your personal style, but don’t only hire people like you. > Prepare speaking points – what you want to say about the job, the company and the future. > Don’t monopolize, interrupt or otherwise lead the conversation. Ask questions and listen.

> What work needs to be done? > What competencies or skills do we need this person to have? > What leadership qualities must they have? (And make no mistake, you want leadership qualities – to some degree – in every position) > What personal attributes or sen-

> Don’t rush to judgment. > Don’t just fill the spot. > Look outside the industry. Toni Antonellis is president of TSA & Co. in Atlanta. E-mail: ToniAntonellis@EarthLink.net

Toni Antonellis leads a workshop at The Hamilton Spectator.

One reporter’s perspective on changing the way newsrooms work.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Joe Duggan, Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, Nebraska

n the nearly 14 years I’ve worked here, the Lincoln Journal Star has seen plenty of change. In 1995, for instance, two competing dailies merged and so did their staffs – a period more akin to upheaval than change. Among major changes since: We got a new press, launched a redesign and started new sections and beats to meet strategic goals. The ideas for many, if not most, changes seemed to come from upper management, who would blitz the staff to seek buy-in. Then came implementation. The Learning Newsroom changed how we change. First of all, it invited everyone to participate before the implementation stage. The resulting conversation forced us to confront the serious challenges to a profession most of us consider a calling. What we found most appealing was the idea that the Learning Newsroom could provide tools to at least attempt to address the challenges. That idea really sustained our work. The process required a lot of hard work: meetings, discussions, research, reports, and more meetings on top of regular job duties. Agreement upon a

given approach was not always universal. Everyone dealt with frustration that change wasn’t happening quickly enough. Some staff chose not to participate. Some felt threatened, defensive or skeptical that the Learning Newsroom would be any different from past initiatives. But a lot of people contributed ideas and joined conversations about innovation, how to best serve readers and how to keep what we do relevant. We implemented some of the ideas. For example, we swapped two of the themed daily feature pages for a section designed for younger readers, and we assigned a reporter and editor to the section. We created an assistant online editor position to help improve our growing efforts to provide fresh and innovative Web content. We made hard decisions on what to stop doing to accommodate the changes. And our training subcommittee did a wonderful job of providing in-house training opportunities and brown-bag lunch discussions. These are just a few highlights. Speaking as one of the people whose job changed because of our dis98

We swapped two of the themed daily feature pages for a section designed for younger readers, and we assigned a reporter and editor to the section. cussions, I felt some discomfort and some doubt. But I respected the process. I participated and know my voice was heard. Time and readers will tell us if we made the right calls. Time also will tell if the Learning Newsroom was just an extended experiment in Lincoln or if it will last. It’s up to the staff. The work is still hard, and nobody wants to change just for the sake of change. But the

Learning Newsroom gave us a way to encourage innovation from everyone. It gave us a way to talk about ideas, act on the good ones, put others on the backburner and let some fade away gracefully – so that, hopefully, this newspaper won’t. Joe Duggan is a reporter at the Lincoln Journal Star in Lincoln, Neb. E-mail: Joe.Duggan@Lee.net

Two linchpins: Steering committee & training plan improvements “‘Let’s just pilot that,’ has become a mantra within the steering committee and across the newsroom as a way to lower the bar of bureaucracy and get us to try some new things.” KAREN PETERSON, managing editor, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Washington

Two essential elements of the Learning Newsroom’s success are the steering committee of frontline staff and the training plan improvements. With an emphasis on the “how to” considerations, each will be the subject of some additional focus here.

THE STEERING COMMITTEE

revious chapters have outlined the steering committee’s role. What’s left is to share some logistics. These include the selection process and ground rules. Also in this chapter, steering-committee veterans will offer insights into how they overcame hurdles or how they would do things differently. The committee structure was not designed to create an “alternate bureaucracy.” At its essence, the committee’s charge was simply to start conversations. It had no budget, no chairperson and no authority, and its work was done in total transparency.

Selecting the team A steering committee of frontline staff was impaneled early in each partnership, usually after the first training session. Because it wouldn’t be fair to put the committee’s selection to a newsroom vote with the larger group still knowing so little about what the work would entail, newsroom leaders and the project director collaborated in drawing from a list of volunteers. We were open with the full staff about the criteria that guided our choices.

> Editors helped identify formal and informal leaders. > A mix was sought of early enthusiasts and those who would be seen as independent thinkers. > Hard-core skeptics were not invited (We knew we could count on them to comment from the sidelines. In fact, we solicited their input throughout the training year.) It would have been unfair, from the start, to saddle the committee with dissenters within. > The diversity of the newsroom would be reflected in the committee. Here is a profile of the 13-member steering committee in one large pilot newsroom: seven reporters, two designers, two photographers, one copy editor and one news assistant. Of those, eight worked in the main office and five in bureaus; seven were women, six were men; eight were age 30 or below; nine were white and four were journalists of color; and their experience ranged from two months to 20 years. This was the largest committee of the 10 pilots; smaller newsrooms had as few as four members. Fortunately in every pilot, a number of people showed an early interest in helping to break outdated styles and increasing their workplace’s focus on the future. In some, there were up to three times the number of volunteers needed for the steering committee. The extras always found their efforts welcomed on subcommittees or task forces. 101

Rules of the road The basic working guidelines for the committee were discussed in the full-staff sessions. Once the committee was formed, the project director usually had a conference call with its members to discuss suggested rules of the road in more detail. Here are some highlights:

1. We recommended there be no chairperson and that committee members rotate the duties of running the meeting. 2. Transparency would be key. Meetings were to be open to everyone, agendas shared in advance and minutes distributed to the full staff. We urged best practices in open, honest communication; anonymous criticism was never solicited and where offered, it was generally rejected. 3. Good meeting protocol would apply: keeping conversation focused, holding to a time limit and ending each work session with “action items” to be achieved before the next session. 4. Steering committees would manage the work of the subcommittees, receiving regular progress reports and honing best ideas for presentation to management. 5. The team would communicate regularly with top leaders. 6. A constructive, solution-focused outlook would be essential. Early conversation around change in newsrooms can wander to personality disputes, old hurts and other issues beyond the scope of this work. Members realized they would lose traction and credibility if the committee was seen as a place to take gossip or gripes. 7. Members would become skilled at “making the business case” for their ideas. That might mean creating a business plan with cost and time estimates. They were urged to draw upon resources within the building and at other papers where similar practices had been successful. (One newsroom got tips from advertising in estimating the cost of newsprint for its new product pitch.) 8. The committee would partner with readership and training editors when considering projects in which these individuals might have a vested interest. 9. The committee would play a role in setting up and following up each group training session, guiding trainers on specific questions the staff might have on the next topic and managing opportunities for follow-up conversations. 10. An area for potential impact would be staff training. Opportunities here were apparent from the first surveys. Training subcommittees in each pilot eventually took on tasks such as tracking newsroom training hours, evaluating effectiveness of each program, surveying staff on additional needs and tying goals to performance. 102

Most committee members took their jobs seriously. They became skilled at negotiating with each other and the larger work force, including, in most cases, winning buy-in from middle managers. They took to heart their responsibility to reflect the interests of their peers and sought feedback often. They steered clear of attempts by those who would try to waste their energy on individual crusades. They were patient with their harshest critics and continuously worked at engaging them in the cause. They practiced honing their pitches by playing devil’s advocate with each other before taking their cases for change to top managers. They also suffered some inevitable growing pains. Most had no previous leadership experience. They eventually followed our tips for making the best use of their time, but it generally followed a few discombobulated meetings when folks left wondering what was accomplished or complaining because a few voices dominated the conversation or talked in circles. Potential supporters won’t buy into an effort that looks likely to spin in place. Committees recognized this quickly. At the start, communication on the committee was unfocused yet robust. One launched nine subcommittees within its first few months, only to look back later and recognize too many horses out of the starting gate at one time can mean a waste of precious energy. Four subcommittees seemed to be the norm, usually in topics like training, Web improvements, operations and communication, or on newsroom-specific topics such as convergence or zoning. They frequently asked: “Where should we be now?” Although committees were advised not to invest a lot of energy crafting policies or otherwise generating the paperwork that can foster bureaucracy (another early inclination), The Hamilton Spectator’s steering committee spent some time in its first meetings crafting a smart mission statement:

“To imagine new and better ways to do things, to rethink processes that are ineffective or content that no longer is valuable, to propose ways to connect to readers differently than we’ve done in the past, to propose ways to use the creativity, talent and ideas of the whole newsroom. In short, to steer conversation to new areas.” The committees’ first pitches to management sometimes focused on requests with limited benefit to furthering organizational goals. In one newsroom it was an on-site fitness facility, in another it was free coffee and bottled water. Management rejected both but showed patience. The would-be change agents had to realize that their greatest value would not come as an unofficial “employee welfare committee” but as a force to help the organization move into the future. The Learning Newsroom training classes helped guide conversation to higher levels. Likewise, committees had to resist carrying out administrative missions. For example, in one newsroom assigning editors wanted to improve daily news-budget filing practices. They suggested the steering committee take up the charge, including setting up a system of punishment for late filers. The group wisely declined. Throughout the process, old systems pushed back. Numerous forces were at work on the committees, from suspicious peers to foot-tapping supervisors who needed them back at their desks to top leaders anxious for action. As noted elsewhere, every frontline team ended its first year wishing it had shown 103

more progress. Journalists are overachievers and perfectionists; perhaps their tendency to downplay success becomes more pronounced as they come to see more in newsrooms that needs changing. Every committee struggled at the start with finding projects to sink their teeth into and within a few months felt overwhelmed with suggestions and had to wrestle with setting priorities. Some found a system of tackling one major initiative per meeting useful or assigning one or two people to champion development of the top three or four goals, acting as shepherds of the work until ideas were ready to come back to the full team. The size of the committee needed to be sufficient so that a majority could still conduct business if a member or two couldn’t break away from assignments. Most found it valuable for the whole group to take a month-long break around mid-year. Even working at full stride, not every project grew wings. Ideas sometimes were rejected by management for various sound reasons. But generally, management decisions were more timely and were accompanied by fuller explanations than had been the case in the past. In an environment of greater respect and openness, even when committees lost, there were benefits from the experience. Management could commend good intentions, and frontline staffers could recognize that bosses still had to make the tough calls. And in more than one case, an editor or publisher later came back to revisit an earlier plan once seen as too ambitious. It’s possible for top leaders to derail steering committees with too much attention – or too little. The group needed direct access to the editor, but he or she could not be seen as controlling if members were to maintain credibility with their peers. Facilitators simply encouraged committees to communicate “regularly” with top leaders. Each pilot found a comfortable routine. In one, there were formal appointments for a delegation to sit down with the editor and managing editor; in another, the committee asked the editor to drop in for the last 10 minutes of each of their work sessions. Sponsors of change initiatives like the Learning Newsroom will need to encourage the frontline staff throughout the process. They will tend to be hard on themselves, and as the months progress, they will have to be urged to trumpet their achievements. They must learn that marketing their success serves a purpose: The work actually gets easier when the full staff begins to see change is occurring.

Advice from committee veterans “Patience” was the top attribute Learning Newsroom committee members said they would suggest a peer bring to the task. Ashley Smith, of The Telegraph in Nashua, N.H., cautioned that frontline staff should conserve energy for the long haul. “I would tell them to be patient because in the beginning it’s really exciting and everybody wants to do a lot of things and then it’s easy for [energy] to fall off, to get discouraged things aren’t happening that quickly. … It’s not all going to happen overnight.” Al McKeon, another Nashua staffer, voiced similar sentiments. “If you think about it, the institutional mindset has been stuck in the same gear for more than a century, so I think that people are more conducive to change, seeing that the industry is changing and our products are changing, but still … don’t expect it to happen quickly.” Sarah Ruby, who was on the committee of The Bakersfield Californian 104

but has since left the staff, said selection decisions are important. “I think the makeup of the steering committee matters a lot, and I think you need a good mix of veterans and new people.” Other advice was more pragmatic. “I would say that it’s not very sexy but you need to invest some time at the beginning figuring out what your process is going to be for vetting ideas, for getting input from editors, especially mid-level editors,” said David Wickert, a reporter at The News Tribune in Tacoma. His committee created a tracking system that helped them chart ideas on a path to final approval, with steps for gaining staff buy-in and middle-manager support. Every committee had to wade through high levels of staff resistance, winning over some converts as months progressed and changes became apparent but going forward without others who failed to ever acknowledge the value of their efforts. “I think part of the resistance came from people who had been there a long time who had seen other initiatives come down the pipe at one time or another,” said Joe Duggan, a reporter at The Journal Star in Lincoln. Sponsors of the earlier efforts also had held out the prospect of a better workplace, he said, “and then in their opinion nothing really did change. It was all just a big much ado about nothing.” He credits Editor Kathleen Rutledge with proving the Learning Newsroom effort would be different. Management support came in other ways, Wickert noted in describing interactions at The News Tribune. “They’ve been good enough to let us flounder a little bit when we needed to flounder. They didn’t come up with solutions. They kind of had a hands-off attitude and said, ‘Go about it.’ … I think that in itself is a way of supporting what we’re trying to do, which is supposed to be a sort of a grassroots, bottom-up approach.” John Boyle of the Asheville Citizen Times talked about a place where every committee eventually found itself: recognizing that no matter how many outcomes they held out, some skeptics would never see a value in this type of work. “I think we converted some of them,” Boyle said, “and there were a couple, to tell you the truth, that were not going to be converted. And we kind of just moved on, went around them and moved on.” Asked what advice she could offer, Susan Rife of the Sarasota HeraldTribune was direct: “Do not give up. Don’t be discouraged by the naysayers, by your own fears, by the inertia that the room has. It’s a long process. You’re not going to change any newsroom overnight. You have got to be patient and just push forward.” Kelly Kearsley of The News Tribune in Tacoma said committee members should plan to model the behavior they would hope to see from peers or management. “Be patient. And really open to all sorts of ideas,” she said. “And don’t get worried when things start to take a while because the end result is really worth it.”

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The frontline staff in each pilot was eager to take leadership up on its invitation for a greater voice in shaping the newsroom’s future. But sometimes there were early stumbles in recognizing opportunities, on both sides. Mike Jenner recounts an occasion when The Bakersfield Californian’s steering committee rejected a specific – and important – chance for feedback.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Mike Jenner, The Bakersfield Californian, Bakersfield, California

knew the Learning Newsroom program would push us in new ways and would force me and other senior managers to let go of the reins and give the staff a greater voice, more input and more control. I didn’t realize this meant I’d be kicked out of the very steering com-

mittee meeting where I tried to ask for input into a radical restructuring of our newsroom. We had just begun the Learning Newsroom program, and we all were sensitive to the ground rule that the staff, not management, was to run committee meetings and drive the agenda. But at the same time I was struggling with the realization that we needed to make significant organizational changes to escape our printcentric mindsets and workflows. I had some ideas in mind and knew they would have a huge impact on the staff and our work. At an editor’s meeting I asked for input and was reminded that I needed to ask the steering committee for ideas, as well. In fact, it seemed this was the perfect issue to take before the group. So I asked to attend the next steering committee meeting and make a presentation. I gave a brief overview of what I saw as an urgent need to change and why we needed to reorganize. I was on a roll, or thought I was, until one of our photographers spoke up and said, “Excuse me, but I really don’t think Mike is supposed to be 106

here.” This prompted a brief debate over the propriety of my presence. Just as the group reached a consensus that I could stay (perhaps remembering the equally important ground rule that all its sessions be open to anyone), one of our senior reporters pointed out that she had an interview coming up and had some pressing things she needed to discuss with the committee before she left, so could I please “wrap it up”? So I made a quick request for suggestions and left. I got nothing. About three weeks later I called a mandatory staff meeting and unveiled our new organizational chart, which showed the elimination of one department and the creation of a new Web department. Some existing beats had gone away, replaced by new beats. The same was true of some key editing positions. Around the room, jaws dropped as people recognized the magnitude of

the changes, and I’m sure some of the steering committee members recalled the meeting I attended and the invitation that went unanswered. As it turned out, the steering committee and the staff hadn’t missed the boat completely. It wasn’t long before a representative appeared at my door to tell me the group had some concerns about certain beat changes and to ask if they could suggest some tweaks to my plan. Those concerns were heard. Some suggestions were very good ones, and they were incorporated. But the exercise taught us all some important lessons, and neither the steering committee members nor the staff would again be silent when they were asked to help design change. Mike Jenner is executive editor of The Bakersfield Californian in Bakersfield, Calif. E-mail: MJenner@Bakersfield.com

Jenner and Bakersfield reporter Sarah Ruby talk about their Learning Newsroom experiences at a May 2006 symposium at API.

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Asking a group of non-managers to come together to start important conversations on how the newsroom can work better and smarter and more successfully engage readers is a tall order. Count on there being growing pains. Karen Peterson’s observations – and pride – echo those of many top leaders in the Learning Newsroom pilots.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Karen Peterson, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Washington

he first couple of months of our steering committee’s work were somewhat painful to watch. Their meetings tended to be long and fairly unproductive. They quashed initiatives at the slightest pushback from their colleagues in the newsroom. Individual members resisted taking charge of meetings or initiatives in an effort to remain democratic. They labored over every step of an initiative, wanting proposals to be perfect. Managers watched this struggling from the sidelines, understanding the committee members would learn valuable lessons in figuring all this out for themselves. Watching was particularly difficult for middle managers. Middle managers get paid to make things happen and have lots of practice at it. As our steering committee began to identify which newsroom issues to tackle – to improve communication or the performance evaluation process, for instance – some middle managers harrumphed that they’d already tried to solve those problems. As the committee inched forward on initiatives, middle managers tapped their feet,

confident they could accomplish the same things far more efficiently. At points, middle managers voiced concern that top managers would approve initiatives without consulting them. And beyond that, middle managers were the ones directly losing staff time as their employees worked on committees. We remained adamant that middle managers not insert themselves into the process but encouraged them to attend steering committee meetings. We showed them that by not interfering, they were helping the committee learn how tough management is. For instance, our committee thought it was doing the newsroom a favor by holding a brown-bag lunch where previously outspoken staffers could talk about the staff ombudsman program they so hated. When none of those staffers showed up for the meeting, the committee learned how hard it is to get employees beyond griping to begin offering solutions. As initiatives came to top editors for approval, we made sure the committee had gained buy-in from middle managers. And eventually we suggested

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to steering committee members that they could get good advice from one manager or another. At about six months, when time came to open the process more fully to middle managers, some of those leaders initially resisted, but now they are key members of several subcommittees. However, our steering committee has chosen to remain manager-free. A couple of other gentle suggestions for navigating steering committee growing pains:

1. Top leaders should fend off “You make it happen.” Some of the first proposals from our steering committee depended on managers for implementation – they basically told us what we needed to do to help solve their problems. It took a little reminding that the idea was for newsroom staff to solve its own problems. For instance, one of the committee’s early proposals came in response to a cry for more recognition of good work. A subcommittee formed to establish a monthly awards program

and came to me with a solid proposal. It tied the award categories to newsroom goals and included a request for money for prizes. The proposal looked good right up until I asked the question, “So who’s going to judge this contest?” “We thought you would,” was their answer. I told them that while I thought the awards were a good idea, I wasn’t willing to give up my time to judge them, which came as a surprise. The committee didn’t want to judge the contests, either. But the conversation led to a creative solution: The committee decided to turn the judging over to the teams that make up our newsroom. The committee set a calendar that has the photo team judging the “Tear Sheet Awards” one month, the sports staff judging another month, and so on. I even kicked in a plate of cookies once a month for the team doing the judging.

2. Say “yes” whenever possible. Top managers decided early on that

Peterson, center, says there were growing pains at the start but found the outcomes of The Learning Newsroom process to be worth the effort.

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“Let’s just pilot that,” has become a mantra within the steering committee and across the newsroom as a way to lower the bar of bureaucracy and get us to try some new things. KAREN PETERSON we were going to say “yes” whenever possible to steering committee proposals. That sounded good in theory but was sometimes hard to stick to. For instance, our committee wanted to review every beat in the newsroom. Top managers had no desire to reorganize, believing it was too big a job to tackle in the midst of some other major initiatives. We told the committee our reasoning, but we didn’t tell them they couldn’t move forward with the discussions and even a recommendation if they came to one. In the process of trying to figure out how to manage such a discussion, the committee began to see how farreaching the implications were. They decided to tackle other more manageable initiatives instead. Again, the lesson was more valuable because they learned it themselves. It was during that process that they began to understand why managers sometimes make decisions that seem to outsiders weak or wrong.

3. Encourage pilot projects. A couple of times, our steering committee became paralyzed in the details of trying to get approval for every last detail of an initiative. Or they were concerned managers would quash an idea they really wanted to try. To keep them moving forward, we suggested they “pilot” the initiative. For example, they wanted to establish a Web internship. The program would let staffers excuse themselves for a week from their regular jobs, move onto our continuous newsdesk and learn how to write for the Web,

develop visuals and post content. It would require the interns to develop a new process for the newsroom or fresh content for readers during their week away. Prospective interns would have to gain the approval of their supervisors. We thought the idea was a good one, but the steering committee was afraid middle managers would balk at releasing their employees for a week. So we suggested they find a potential intern with a friendly manager and give it a try. They did, and the intern spent his week developing an interactive map of Wi-Fi hot spots in our coverage area. He produced new content online, and we centerpieced it on our Business cover. He also helped develop a tool we’ve used subsequently for holiday light displays, Happy Hour best bets and other stories. “Let’s just pilot that,” has become a mantra within the steering committee and across the newsroom as a way to lower the bar of bureaucracy and get us to try some new things. Karen Peterson is managing editor of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. E-mail: Karen.Peterson@TheNewsTribune.com

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MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Donna Yanish Lovell, San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, California

e Californians have a reputation for being a casual, laid-back bunch. No standing on ceremony here. Just jump in and get things done. But when it came to our steering committee, which was known at the Mercury News as “G12,’’ some level of formality was key to getting things done. First, what didn’t work: meetings without an agenda; no specific topics for discussion; no plan for follow-up or system for recording what happened. We also knew that to designate anyone as the permanent committee chair would put far too much strain on any one member’s time. So, after a few false starts, we adopted a more formal meeting structure. Below are highlights:

drop out at the last minute meant meetings just weren’t happening. A small-group meeting is better than no meeting at all.

> Appoint another person to take minutes. In the G12, that person would then be the chair of the next meeting. > Unless otherwise determined ahead of time, meetings were kept to

one hour. > Meetings ended with a review of action items, the to-do list of immediate chores, and who would do them.

> The chairperson sent out the minutes and … toward the end of our work … posted them on a Web site set up for the project. Of course, the system wasn’t flawless. One frequent problem was that when the G12 met after a training session we’d get caught up in a discussion stemming from the session. As a result, we’d head off in a new direction, letting previous work fall by the wayside. One member in particular, however, was very good at keeping the group focused. We also learned not to be afraid to drop things that just weren’t working. More than one goal was tabled because we weren’t getting the traction we needed. In general, however, our process resulted in a group of 12 busy journalists accomplishing goals including moving up the start of the work day, increasing attention to deadlines, increasing awareness of the 1A process and beginning to break down departmental barriers.

> Set a regular day and time for the committee to meet. Meetings were, in the beginning, two weeks apart, providing enough time to get things done outside of formal meetings and yet not gathering so seldom as to lose momentum. We met more frequently in the middle of the year as we presented our ideas and sought feedback from the newspaper’s management and the newsroom as a whole. > Rotate the responsibility of serving as chairperson. People would volunteer to serve as chair at the previous meeting when the date and time of the meeting were being determined. The chairperson created the agenda (with input from others) and sent out an e-mail inviting others to the meetings. > Keep focused on the group’s priorities. > With few exceptions, hold the

Donna Yanish Lovell is breaking news online editor of the San Jose Mercury News in San Jose, Calif. E--mail: DYanish@MercuryNews.com

meetings no matter how many members are able to attend. Canceling meetings because members need to 111

TRAINING IMPROVEMENTS A core goal of this project was to foster the creation of self-training newsrooms. Improving the traditional staff training plan was essential to that mission. Training improved when it was:

1. linked to strategic goals 2. measured 3. driven by staff input 4. expanded beyond traditional topics 5. tied to employee performance management, including annual evaluations. Typical newsroom training enhances the skills of individuals. In addition to the 20 hours of Learning Newsroom training that focused on broader goals â&#x20AC;&#x201C; such as increasing outward focus on consumers and attuning mindsets toward business success â&#x20AC;&#x201C; we wanted to see self-sustaining training mechanisms built in each pilot. Part of the criteria for selecting pilot partners was that each applicant show a track record of investment in staff development. We reviewed inventories of training for two years prior to the application and broke down the hours trained and dollars invested into four categories: off-site training, training on site with outside experts, training on site with local experts, and training on site with staff experts. The newsrooms exhibited different levels of sophistication in their approaches to training. A few had training editors, including one whose fulltime job was staff development. But the quality of training improved in each pilot with increased input and involvement from the frontlines. There also were wide variations in the financial resources allocated. Most of the pilot newsrooms took hits to their training budgets even during the project. Overall, the news industry has a shameful record for investing in the development of its people as compared to other industries. A staffer in one pilot said she received more training working in a real estate office than during her first year in the newsroom. Whatever the amount of money available, here are steps any newsroom can take to increase the value of its training plan.

Start with questions like these: > How are training needs in the newsroom determined? > In addition to training of benefit to individual employees, are there efforts to build a critical mass of knowledge in certain skills for groups of, or all, employees? > How is the training budget established? > Are training efforts tied to strategic (companywide) goals? To newsroom goals? > Are training and development plans part of an annual employee evaluation program? 112

Then, tally training in these four classifications by using the training tracker found among the Tools on page 159: > > > >

off-site training training on site with outside experts training on site with local experts training on site with staff experts.

Then consider: > Putting a portion of the training budget directly in the control of a training committee of frontline staff. We saw hundreds of new training hours created as a result of this show of trust. In most cases, the team was given control over one-third of the pot, with management maintaining final approval for the spending plan. The dollar amounts ranged from $500 to nearly $10,000. The staff demonstrated thriftiness, driving hard bargains with outside trainers and mandating advance work and follow-up be included in the deals. Editors were also happy to see the group take responsibility for polling the staff on needs, marketing the sessions and evaluating effectiveness of the programs after their delivery.

> Setting a minimum annual requirement per staffer. Several newsrooms set hourly goals, starting with eight or 12 for the first year. One bumped up to 16 for 2007. Another experimented with a point system and incentives (for example, a drawing where those who exceeded the goal had a chance at extra vacation days). Every newsroom that established goals saw them met or exceeded by a majority of staff, sometimes months in advance of the cutoff date. > Tracking hours. Reassess frequently to ensure you’re gaining broad reach and covering timely, diverse topics. > Raising the profile of the commitment. Rewrite evaluations to require conversation on individual training needs and track progress. Consider training and development in making decisions on staffing changes and promotions. Although traditional craft skills should rightly retain a central focus in newsroom training plans, with the staff playing a greater role in its own development, the topics can broaden. For example, Spanish classes were well received in Bakersfield. “Math for journalists” sessions filled the training room in Nashua. Tips for broadcast reporting were valued by convergence-focused journalists in Sarasota. Several committees sponsored follow-ups from the business literacy Learning Newsroom session to gain more insights from their organization’s market research. In fact, the essence of the business literacy session should be – and in some pilot newsrooms already is – repeated at least twice a year to keep knowledge current. Nearly all of the pilots sponsored multiple courses in online skills. Staff-led brown-bag sessions are an easy way to pump up training at little or no cost and have their role in a complete training calendar. To encourage staffers to lead sessions, reward them with extra credit toward their annual minimum for time invested. The training subcommittee at the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota created an evaluation form, used even for brown-bag sessions, with 113

these questions: Was the session a valuable use of your time? What else would you like to learn? What improvements would you suggest? How do you expect to apply what you’ve learned in your job? Sidebars in this chapter written by frontline training experts in Hamilton and Bloomington offer other tips and resources. Weak performance management systems – in particular, poor practices around annual evaluations – can make it tough to persuade journalists to take the final steps to institutionalize positive changes. An example might be the hesitancy to set an annual minimum for training hours. Adding more staff-driven training opportunities will be a carrot that will attract many in the newsroom to increase their skills, but an improved plan will not have its best chance of success unless there are consequences for the hard-line resisters. The several Learning Newsrooms that made the leap to annual training requirements found them a powerful tool for getting everyone focused on the same goals. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune was investing significantly in training and development long before the Learning Newsroom came to town. It used the program experience, however, to increase the impact of those efforts, said Jon DeVries, readership editor. “Probably the most important thing that’s come out so far is our focus on training. To date, it hasn’t been equitable, it hasn’t been open to everyone; different groups have dealt with training in different ways. Because of this program we’re going to have a formal training plan with a minimum number of hours for everyone in the newsroom, tied to performance goals. This is a real breakthrough for us.” Likewise, the San Jose newspaper had long been known for the develop-

The steering committee at The Telegraph in Nashua , N.H. , solicited ideas for new directions during a surprise pizza lunch in early 2006. Livening up the newsroom event was a skit starring a guest bear. Reporter Ashley Smith pulls off the costume headpiece after a stellar performance. 114

ment opportunities it provided journalists who work there. Committee member Donna Yanish Lovell hopes her group’s contributions will add even more value. “The Mercury News has always had a fairly good training program for some job categories but not so much for other job categories. One of the things that has come from the Learning Newsroom is to codify what training opportunities we have and look at where we need to improve training and what kind of opportunities are available to make sure it’s not just the reporters who are getting training or the assignment editors who are getting training, but more of a broad base of training.” Asheville’s Learning Newsroom focused on making training “more deliberate and consistent,” said Angie Newsome, a member of the steering committee at the Asheville Citizen-Times. “There was this feeling before the Learning Newsroom that training was either a reward or a punishment.” Efforts there tried to recast training as “something that can promote our own interests and the interests of the newsroom, and really making us a better newspaper in terms of our product.” Phil Fernandez, Asheville’s managing editor, noted that increased opportunities can give journalists a greater ability to respond to the changing news environment. “I do think people want to control their own destiny,” he said. Training subcommittees also helped management become more systematic about reaping the value of more expensive off-site programs. Most newsrooms now require those who are sent away for training to lead a brown-bag session for peers within two weeks of their return to the newsroom. “The Spec in the last few years has invested a lot around training,” said Dana Robbins, then-editor in chief in Hamilton, Ontario. “The main differentiation that happened for us around the Learning Newsroom is that we turned it over to the newsroom and said, ‘OK, where should we be spending the money? How do you want to develop? What is the training that you think you need?’ as opposed to the process that existed in the past, which was us sitting back and saying, ‘This is the training we think you need.’ “I think that’s given us a more savvy training process than we’ve had in the past, and I think it’s also helped people feel engaged that, ‘Yes, this is my reinvention,’ and that’s not something that’s being wasted on me.” Editor Kathleen Rutledge saw a similar evolution in Lincoln. “I’d say the big strides in training are two-fold: One is that the staff is now actively involved in thinking about training ... . And the other is that the staff is much more interested now in maximizing the use of our training dollars. … So it’s a much broader program now.” At the end of the first training session at The Herald-Times in Bloomington, an editor ventured that he could see how decreasing defensiveness in the newsroom could be a good thing. “Imagine it,” he said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could learn from every mistake?” A colleague upped the ante: “Wouldn’t it be great if every time we have the opportunity to learn something we would learn something?” The two had essentially defined a learning organization. Improving the traditional training plan can accelerate the process to becoming one.

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All the pilots added value to their staff development plans, but with total training time equal to more than 23 hours per person in 2006, Bloomington was our rock star.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Rod Spaw, The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana

very newspaper can offer training and career development to its staff. Size doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. All that is required is a commitment from management and staff to get it done. Our 28,000-daily-circulation newspaper in Indiana with a newsroom staff of 47 FTEs began tracking newsroom training in 2005 as part of the Learning Newsroom effort. Within two years, the amount of staff training increased from an average of 450 hours per year – obtained mostly by managers at professional conferences – to more than 1,100 hours in 2006, nearly half of that delivered via in-house programs. Here is how it happened, outlined in steps that every newspaper can take.

relevant to the daily work. It should have concrete objectives and a clear road map of how those will be reached. The first task was drafting a comprehensive training plan. Now, a staff committee helps set priorities and identify training that fulfills the plan’s objectives. A key part of the process is an annual survey that asks employees what they wish to learn in the coming year.

3. Set goals, link to performance management. This newspaper set an hourly training goal for full-time reporters, copy editors, graphic designers and photographers. The 2006 goal was 12 hours for all full-time staff; the goal for 2007 is 16 hours. Specific priorities are set for individuals during annual performance evaluations. The training coordinator logs training hours and provides periodic reports to management and staff. The American Society of Newspaper Editors is a good place to learn about training plans. Go to the archives section of its Web site – www.asne.org – and search within the 2003 Learning Newsroom report for more information.

1. Make training someone’s job. Training becomes a priority when it is written into a job description. The Herald-Times created a position of newsroom “training coordinator” whose responsibility includes identifying training opportunities and recording training hours logged by staff. It’s not a full-time job; the coordinator – an hourly employee – is budgeted five hours of a 40-hour work week for training activities.

4. Ask for help. Newspaper trainers 2. Have a plan, involve staff. Know

are a generous bunch. They are happy to share ideas. Go to www.notrainnogain.org to start building a resource

what you want to accomplish. Training should be practical, cost-effective and 116

list, and regularly check the newspaper trainers listserv hosted by the Poynter Institute on its Web site. We benefited greatly from advice freely given by such trainers as Kevin McGrath of The Wichita Eagle, Mike Roberts of The Arizona Republic and Steve Buttry of the American Press Institute.

social service agencies, healthcare organizations and colleges and universities are potential resources. Local experts can be invited to a brown-bag discussion.

9. Each one, teach one. Journalism is a team sport. So is learning. When our employees go away for company-paid training, they are expected to share what they learned with staff upon their return. And a staff member doesn’t have to leave for training to have teachable skills. Maybe it’s working with a spreadsheet or following a paper trail at the courthouse. Our staff-led workshops have included such topics as using electronic schedule organizers, police reporting, creating more effective print promos and using pointand-shoot digital cameras. The Herald-Times still struggles to deliver training the staff will find useful in advancing skills and meeting the expectations of modern news consumers. It remains a challenge to convince busy journalists that it is OK to make time for training. It helps to create a transparent process, open to everyone’s participation. Training can extend journalists’ vision beyond their own little corner of the newsroom.

5. Take advantage of low-cost opportunities. APME’s NewsTrain provided two days of high-quality instruction for mid-level editors at a cost of $35. The Society of Professional Journalists and Bloomberg News in recent years have offered other traveling programs. Watch for regional seminars sponsored by professional groups and state journalism organizations. Monitor www.journalismtraining.org for upcoming training events within easy driving distance of the newsroom.

6. Find training online. A whole curriculum of largely free study is a mouse click away at www.newsu.org, a project of the Poynter Institute and the Knight Foundation. News U combines the reach of the Internet with the expertise of staff at Poynter, SPJ, the Maynard Institute and elsewhere to build self-directed study modules. BusinessJournalism.org, operated by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, is another good resource.

Rod Spaw is training editor of The Herald-Times in Bloomington, Ind. E-mail: RSpaw@HeraldT.com

7. Seek grants and scholarships. Organizations such as the American Press Institute offer some fellowships for training. In addition, professional organizations sometimes will reduce registration fees or give hotel vouchers for members from small newspapers. State journalism groups sometimes have grant money available. Opportunities for assistance are not always publicized, so ask.

8. Create local partnerships. Not all wisdom lies outside our own communities. There are folks close to home who can help improve the quality of the news product. Police and the courts, 117

Getting momentum behind training improvements: ‘Committees don't require large numbers or exorbitant time. They do require commitment.’

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Agnes Bongers, Carmelina Prete, and Denise Davy, The Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

iddle me this: How do you create a training session so popular that it attracts nearly every segment of the newsroom, including many who have never voluntarily signed up for such a class – and the only cost is staff time? Answer: Get one of the most respected newsroom staffers to run a hands-on session that applies directly to the daily work of the newsroom, namely, producing news. Obvious? Yes. But not necessarily a practice in creating newsroom training plans. In just over a year and a half, we’ve delivered more than 550 person-hours of training, three times the amount delivered on average over the previous several years. The work has yielded numerous “revelations” for us at The Hamilton Spectator.

complaints. We limited most sessions to 60 to 90 minutes.

> Schedule sessions to suit the staff’s working schedules. Longer, twohour sessions were held close to lunch with food provided. > Time is everything. (Reprise.) Even short sessions lost people. Management has to clearly stress the importance of training and its commitment to giving staff time. For example, managers from every section e-mailed their staffs about the media law session. It was extremely wellattended.

> Think lifestyle sessions, not just skills training. Conflict resolution and time management sessions drew strong support.

> Poll, question, survey the newsroom. Then do it again. And again. We returned to the newsroom numerous times to ask what they wanted. We did it face-to-face, with survey and pen in hand. Have participants complete training evaluations on the spot.

> Use the expertise within the newsroom. Peer-to-peer training has yielded sessions in: newswire techniques, grammar and spelling, photo technology, Web video training, investigative Web tools (we couldn’t carry enough sessions on this one) and Web search engines. > Keep everyone posted. A training calendar tracked work and ensured we had at least one program per month. Sometimes there were three. The calendar was sent out via e-mail to the entire newsroom once a month. > Keep it short. Time is everything. Anything more than an hour drew

> Committees don’t require large numbers or exorbitant time. They do require commitment. Our committee started with seven newsroom members plus one manager. Two of the original newsroom team remain, one more joined on. Many from the original group who left performed solid foundational work to get this group going, work that endures today, such as setting up questionnaires and tracking evaluations of sessions. Another is still 118

developing a newsroom Internet source site. The three remaining all work part time. Meetings are non-traditional, informal, mostly quick and often called and held on the fly. We meet to get work done. > Deal with criticism. Use it wisely. Let it go. Keep in mind you can’t please everyone. Management provided us with about one-third of its training budget, about $10,000. (Editor’s note: This was a trend in the Learning Newsrooms. In more than half, management shared a slice of the budget – however modest – with the staff training committee, usually about a third, with great results everywhere.) We used that money for paid speakers, with the biggest chunk of our budget going to a U.S. writing coach who focused on writing short, which was the No. 1 choice in newsroom surveys, and ran small-group sessions over four days. We spent about $8,000 on this alone. Was it worth it? We would argue that if that money

could have been spent instead on hiring on-call staff to regularly backfill positions during our monthly training sessions, we would have had even more participation. Our next step is even more exciting. We are looking into providing training and professional development outside of the traditional “speaker in the newsroom” approach. We want people to develop, to some degree, their own training plans, within a template that the committee will develop, again based on newsroom surveys. We are talking about each newsroom member getting one day to develop professionally by, for instance, taking that day to develop sources, investigate story possibilities, job shadow, search the Internet, or tour specific locations in the city. Agnes Bongers, Carmelina Prete and Denise Davy are Tools and Training committee members of The Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton, Ont., Canada.

A Learning Newsroom training session in Hamilton.

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What change looks like: Results & outcomes “Young people working for newspapers apparently are concerned about their organizations’ ability to adapt to changing environmental demands and consumer needs, to compete effectively against technology-based organizations,and to offer them viable, challenging, and secure positions in the future.” ROBERT A. COOKE, Ph.D., director of Human Synergistics International, Plymouth, Michigan

RESULTS OF THE LEARNING NEWSROOM WORK: RESEARCH DATA AND PROJECT OUTCOMES

n trying to gauge the impact of the Learning Newsroom work in the pilot newsrooms, there are two major categories to consider: 1) the quantitative results of hard data and 2) the anecdotal, or qualitative, outcomes that our partners attribute to conversations started through the program. Using a well-accepted diagnostic tool, the project team compared “before” and “after” data – benchmark surveys taken just prior to launch into the program and a follow-up at 18 months into the work – to look for changes in the perceptions of journalists regarding their work environments. In all seven newsrooms for which there is comparative data available as of this writing, the work led to increases in constructive behavior by at least some segments of staff – reflecting progress by a few individuals or many. Three newsrooms had not yet reached the 18-month threshold set by project protocol for a repeat of the survey. All 10 newsrooms cite operational improvements and other qualitative outcomes. Some saw the launch of successful new products, and a few attribute readership gains to their involvement in the program. These are the most obvious avenues for change, but they are not the only ones. For example, every newsroom improved – in volume and quality – its staff training program. Hundreds of hours of additional training per year were typical in most pilots. Better training has to be ranked as an important legacy for the Learning Newsroom. Others results are more intangible, such as what Managing Editor Karen Peterson calls an attitudinal “change in the room” at The News Tribune in Tacoma. Mike Jenner of The Bakersfield Californian makes a similar, holistic observation: “I think the staff feels a lot more invited to be a part of change and to be a part of where we’re going.” Bob Gabordi, editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times, during its initial year in the program and now executive editor at The Tallahassee Democrat, resisted labeling a top outcome. “This isn’t something that you can place in little boxes and say ‘this is important, this is important,’” he said. “All of it is so interrelated in that you can’t do pieces of it. It has to be the whole thing.” Each newsroom saw dozens of changed practices, with impacts large and small. We could never hope to capture all the outcomes that resulted from the energy invested. Still, this chapter will list a number of specific examples, beginning with the research data.

Impact as reflected in the OCI data The Organizational Culture Inventory®, developed by Human Synergistics International of Plymouth, Mich., was created almost two decades ago by researchers Robert A. Cooke, Ph.D., and J. Clayton Lafferty, Ph.D., to introduce organizations and consultants to the importance of culture, to guide cultural change efforts and to test the effectiveness of workplace change initiatives. 121

Three types of workplace culture defined by the Organizational Culture Inventory® and the four styles of behavior likely to be dominant in each, along with The Learning Newsroom’s working definitions: Constructive Culture ■

Humanistic: Encouraging, supportive

■

Affiliative: Cooperative, friendly

■

Achievement: Accomplishment, challenging goals

■

Self-actualizing: Quality, enjoyment

Passive/Defensive Culture ■

Approval: Acceptance, agreement

■

Conventional: Conforming, “status quo”

■

Dependent: Obey, follow instructions

■

Avoidance: Wait and observe, resist risk taking

Aggressive/Defensive Culture ■

Oppositional: Contrariness, disagreement

■

Power: Authoritative, controlling

■

Competitive: Win, outperform others

■

Perfectionistic: No errors, long hours, unrealistic standards

Additionally, 40 supplemental questions written by the Learning Newsroom team to get at issues specific to journalists’ work environments were added onto the OCI so those responses could be tracked statistically as well. For example, these items ask “to what extent …” Do you feel free to suggest bold new ideas that might help improve content or working conditions? Are you encouraged to ask “why” and “why not” about existing policies and practices? Are you encouraged to understand how your work affects others and, in turn, the operation of the whole newspaper? Are the needs of average readers discussed in making decisions on which stories to pursue, who should be interviewed and how the information can best be presented? The OCI yielded a thorough analysis of worker expectations in each newsroom, with staff perspectives reviewable by age group, department, management level and a category called “expectation to stay” that had respondents estimate the amount of time they might continue to work for the organization, choosing from categories of less than two years, 2-6 years, 6-15 years and more than 15 years. As administered in the pilots, the OCI discerned “shared behavioral expectations” for the staffs of each newsroom. Experts who work with organizations in changing workplace culture caution that it takes three to five years of hard work to see significant change. Working within the confines of a three-year project, we chose to repeat the survey to look for change at the earliest point recommended for credible results: 18 months. Any workplace will, under cer-

tain circumstances, exhibit any of the 12 behavior styles. But in work environments with starting points such as we saw in the pilots, we hoped to see newsrooms generally pull in, or decrease, norms for the eight defensive behaviors and exhibit stronger expectations for the four constructive behaviors. A comparison of the initial and follow-up survey results in a single newsroom presents a complex picture. Subgroups sometimes took big leaps to the positive or negative in one or more of the 12 styles. Again, due to the timeframe measured, some (not surprisingly) essentially stayed the same. Some trends from the data can be shared here, although results will not be identified by specific newsroom.

Trends across the pilot newsrooms For our reviews, Learning Newsroom consultant Pierre “Pete” Meyer, an industrial psychologist with a background in research and extensive experience in interpreting the OCI for many organizations, provided an analysis of each benchmark OCI. All 10 newsrooms entered the Learning Newsroom partnership exhibiting the attributes of what experts label an “aggressive-defensive” workplace. (See chart showing the three types of workplace cultures and the behaviors that are dominant in such environments.) This was not surprising, considering previous culture research by the Readership Institute’s Impact Study that showed entrenched, change-resistant styles of behavior in all but a few of the 90 papers in that study. Additionally, Meyer was asked to look for statistically reliable indications of change in the seven newsrooms where follow-up comparisons can be made. Below are some highlights from his assessments:

> All seven Learning Newsroom pilots showed signs of overall “movement in the right direction,” as Meyer described it, by various segments of the staff. The degree of positive movement and size of the staff population showing the progress varied. In general, frontline staff seemed to be the earliest and best adapters. > All seven newsrooms still showed sufficient perfectionistic and oppositional behavior, despite the pockets of improvement, to continue to be classified as aggressive-defensive workplaces. > Each set of survey results also signals this work around change created discomfort or confusion for some staff members. In six of the seven newsrooms, in specific subgroups, this could be seen as an increase in one or more of the undesirable styles. For example, individuals who thought life in the newsroom was better in the old days – and said so when we started the Learning Newsroom work – could exhibit their frustration over the calls for change by more aggressively resisting the change occurring around them today. Also, these findings may be at least partially attributable to “cognitive dissonance” – a condition that reflects the tension that can occur when individuals have been presented evidence of a need for change, but this evidence makes them uncomfortable because the old culture has been so deeply embedded in their views and beliefs. Their initial response to this disharmony means that sometimes resistance can spike higher or 123

messages around the need for change may be distorted before the group agrees to the new route. > Still, in all seven newsrooms, there are signs of an increased recognition among the majority of staff of the need for change in order for the organization to remain viable. Some segments of the staff seem unsure about how to get there. > In two of seven newsrooms, progress away from the perfectionistic and oppositional behaviors is so significant, as reflected in movement by individuals and subgroups, that except for a few strong resistors, they would have made the leap to a constructive workplace in the 18month timeframe. More than once the Learning Newsroom team referred to psychiatristauthor Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s widely known “stages of grief” model – with its commonly recognized progression through Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. The model might at first seem a far-fetched comparison for workplace behavior. But to some degree, change is always a matter of giving up past behaviors and beliefs and entering a new way of thinking, as Meyer noted in conversations with the staffs. With that understanding, it is clear the work of the Learning Newsroom had to acknowledge some degree of mourning for what was, as journalists adapt to what will be in viewing new expectations for success in the future. (See page 153 for a more complete description of the Kubler-Ross model and one other: change expert and author John Kotter’s Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major Change.) In addition to drawing on Meyer’s analytical expertise throughout the three-year program, we sought an independent analysis of the research data. In February 2007, Cooke, one of the OCI’s two developers, was engaged to review the surveys for the seven pilots where “before” and “after” responses were available for comparison. Cooke ran additional analyses (t-tests and sign tests) to test the significance of the level of change recorded over time. His review supported Meyer’s assessments. In some cases his remarks provided additional and consistent insight. In reporting his findings, Cooke classified the seven pilots into three groups to aid discussion of their work:

Group A: Statistically significant cultural change: Two newsrooms Group B: Moderate cultural change: Two newsrooms Group C: Little or no cultural change: Three newsrooms

Group A “Based on their OCI results, the two newspapers in the A group experienced more cultural change than we typically see in organizations that have administered the OCI on a pretest and post-test basis,” Cooke said. Significant improvement in workplace culture can be recorded in two ways: when defensive norms and negative behaviors become less pronounced or when constructive norms and positive behaviors are seen more frequently. “Norms for all 12 styles moved in the desired direction in both of these organi124

zations,” Cooke stated. In one of the two newsrooms, the change initiatives had the most impact on the Defensive styles, with norms and expectations for five of these styles decreasing significantly. In the other, the work produced significant increases along all four Constructive styles. In other positive outcomes, one of the newsrooms showed “greater clarity around their roles and less role conflict; additionally, they were more likely to state that they would recommend the organization to potential employees and clients.” “At both newspapers, members reported significant increases in the quality of customer service and the organizations’ responsiveness to the changing needs of clients,” he added.

Group B The two newsrooms in the B group showed a moderate degree of cultural change, Cooke stated. Still maintaining a high bar for progress, change was observed in the desired direction along 11 of the 12 OCI cultural styles at both organizations. Both showed statistically significant decreases along one or two Defensive styles. “Though some of these changes were quite small in magnitude, the positive trends are likely ‘real’ and indicative of more change in the future,” Cooke concluded. At one, members reported better customer service on the post-test survey. In contrast, respondents at the other were more critical of their customer service and responsiveness to the needs of clients. It is possible that both mindsets reflect positive outcomes of the Learning Newsroom work. “This type of negative change,” Cooke noted in reference to the latter, “sometimes occurs during the early phases of organization development programs as people focus more attention on performance.”

Group C For these three newsrooms, Cooke observed no significant changes along any of the 12 cultural styles measured by the OCI. There were, however, small trends in a positive direction. In one, progress was shown in nine of the OCI styles; at another, progress was shown in eight styles, he added. “While these results are not statistically significant, they nevertheless suggest that members of these newspapers quickly overcame the turmoil and uncertainty that can characterize the early phases of change initiatives,” Cooke said. “On the other hand, these results could also indicate that the change initiatives were not sufficiently strong or sustained to have a measurable impact within these organizations” for the time frame reflected. In the third newsroom, results were more mixed, Meyer noted. For example, overall the newsroom staff was more constructive but also more aggressivedefensive. The frontline staff was more constructive, and managers exhibited both more constructive but also more passive behaviors. In other words, “two steps forward, one step back,” Meyer noted. Cooke said he was not surprised at the lack of statistically measurable positive change in three newsrooms. It would not have been unusual to have seen 125

negative changes in a few of the 10 samples at such an early point in the process, he said. “They are no doubt introducing better practices,” he said, “It might just be too soon to see the impact on cultural norms as measured in the OCI.” “In general, considering all seven newsrooms for which post-tests are available, the results look very positive and encouraging,” Cooke said.

Concerns over a possible exodus of younger staff This book has noted an unexpected and worrisome signal that arose from the analysis of the initial set of OCIs; that is, that in the 10 pilots, the younger staff seemed to be warning that the organizational ills typical in newsrooms today may drive them out of the business. While a certain amount of turnover is expected and normal among the youngest practitioners of any craft – in pursuit of career advancement or reflecting a simple change of heart – these messages seemed different in both volume and intensity. A majority of younger journalists (age 29 and below) in nearly every pilot seemed to us to be saying, “We’re leaving because the changes we see as necessary aren’t happening fast enough.” The project team spent many hours deliberating on the hypothesis since the trend first became evident in late 2004, checking and re-checking data. Nothing from the OCI, responses to a second survey or in our conversations in the newsroom suggests today’s younger journalists are wimps. To the contrary, we saw evidence of dedicated, committed people who love their craft but simply see no long-term career prospects unless the industry undergoes radical change and does so quickly. Our concern was such that we began to share our suspicions with other pilots as they entered the program. In all the newsrooms, many veteran journalists were disbelieving of the data and incredulous at the suggestion that anything about a traditional newsroom work environment might drive out younger journalists. Not finding an outlet for their voices in a workplace defined by strongly hierarchical management structure, working for an organization losing touch with its consumer base or seen as slow to adapt to market change shouldn’t be sufficient reasons for a twenty-something journalist to change careers, they said. We told Human Synergistics’ Cooke of our theory and asked him to look at the data. He evaluated the Learning Newsroom OCI benchmark results in the 10 pilots and additionally made comparisons of responses to two other sets of data: from the RI Impact Study and a cross-industry database of responses from workers of like ages. His conclusions were chilling. The Learning Newsroom data “strongly indicate that newspaper employees in the 20 to 29 age range are more likely than their older colleagues and their peers in other industries to find themselves in new jobs, organizations, and even industries within the next couple of years,” Cooke wrote. Meyer and Cooke agree there is a risk in trying to generalize too broadly based on the small sample represented by the 10 pilots, but they see similar cause for concern. “It does appear that young staff members are signaling that they are considering leaving not only their newsrooms but the industry as well,” Cooke said. The Learning Newsroom team believed younger journalists were being pragmatic in weighing their options, rather than responding to conditions such as long hours or low salaries. Cooke agreed. “While not dissatisfied with their organizations, young people working for newspapers apparently are concerned about their organizations’ ability to 126

adapt to changing environmental demands and consumer needs, to compete effectively against technology-based organizations, and to offer them viable, challenging, and secure positions in the future,” Cooke wrote. They believe their newspapers are responding to the changing needs of readers and customers only moderately well, and less so than their counterparts in other industries, he said. While older employees share the same concern about their employers’ adaptability, “their seniority most likely reduces the impact of this problem on their career decisions.” A host of other sociological and organizational factors may add to the dilemma for younger staff. The supplemental OCI questions written to get specifically at newsroom expectations may yield clues to some of their concerns, Cooke wrote. “For example, considering all respondents together, stronger intentions to leave are reported by those who feel their newspapers lacked a clear vision for the future and failed to communicate that vision and/or gain commitment to it. Intentions to leave are related also to feelings that conflicts/differences cannot be discussed, bold ideas to improve content cannot be suggested, and the quality and impact of the paper cannot be candidly addressed.” Both analysts said it’s fair to speculate the younger journalists would leave the industry rather than relocate to another newsroom, noting it would be logical to believe the same fears would exist there. Cooke cites two reasons. First, he noted in the Learning Newsroom sample, employees of only one out of 10 newspapers reported intentions to stay that are as strong as in the historical average across industries. Similarly, in the Readership Impact sample, employees at fewer than 15 percent of the newspapers reported average or higher than average intentions to stay. “Second, employees across newspapers, regardless of age, view organizational adaptability – which, along with culture, is possibly the most important factor driving intentions to leave – as a problem,” he wrote. At the time of the Learning Newsroom pretests, all 10 of the newspapers were rated by journalists as average or below average in terms of responding to the changing needs of customers. “Unless they believe that they can identify and land a job with one of the few constructive and adaptable newspapers in the country, it would be reasonable for them to search for new jobs with organizations in other industries,” Cooke stated. Leaving the industry might be the surest way to get the clarity around vision and mission, involvement in decision making, and developmental opportunities they seek. “This ‘drain’ of talent can be reversed only to the extent that newspapers move toward more constructive cultures, invest more in the development of their managers and employees, effect structural changes to improve communication and involvement in decision making, and rely on such improvements to more effectively adapt to change, improve quality, and enhance readership,” Cooke said. (See Cooke’s full report in his sidebar beginning on page 130.)

Other signals from the data comparisons Generally, the 18-month follow-up surveys in the pilot Learning Newsrooms show the frontline staff and younger staff to be the early adaptors and the quickest to move to constructive styles of behavior, although there were exceptions. Mid-managers seemed the subgroup next most likely to move – though 127

Sarasota's features design director recruited support from the business side in producing this 6-page poster to mark the 2006 movie release, driving readership and advertising revenue.

sometimes in negative ways. In some newsrooms, they were equal to or moved to a greater degree into constructive styles than the frontline staff. In a few, they seemed to plant their feet in opposition to the changes going on around them and move backwards, becoming more defensive. Cooke said this type of resistance by mid-level managers has been observed in other organizations. In addition, top leaders generally started out reporting more constructive norms than the general newsroom population and sometimes moved to even more positive styles. Looking across the newsroom by departments, visual journalists – photographers, graphic artists and designers – also seemed to move (sometimes by leaps) toward more constructive styles. Weighing in anecdotal conversations through the work, the project team wondered if we were seeing a group saying, essentially, “We’ve sometimes been left out of these types of important, future-focused conversations, we appreciate being invited to have a greater voice and we’ll do our share.” A category the OCI termed “other” – which could take in clerks, librarians, editorial page staff and other employees whose job title didn’t put them into a larger classification – showed like progress. The team speculated these workers might have held similar perspectives. Copy desks, in general, were slower to buy into the work and in most newsrooms showed less positive movement. Results in the “news” category, which includes reporters, were more mixed, with some moving forward, some staying about the same, and some stepping slightly back. What does all this mean in more human terms? Organizational development experts would say that remarks such as these by John Metz, a member of the steering committee at the Corpus Christi Caller Times, may also get at the improvements quantified by the OCI. “We had a meeting about it a 128

few months ago where we brought everyone in and talked about ‘So what have your impressions been on the Learning Newsroom?’ And all of us on the steering committee were nervous about what people were going to say. We felt like we had done a lot of things and we weren’t sure people had really recognized it,” Metz said during a May 2006 interview at an API symposium. “We were really encouraged by the number of people who said, ‘You know, this is a great environment to work in,’ especially newer employees who were comparing it to where they had just come from. They said, ‘You know, this is a much more collaborative environment. The morale is much better. It’s a more positive place to be.’ And that really made us feel very good that we had actually done more than we’d thought. It’s difficult, I think, as you’re trudging forward to recognize all the things that you’re doing.” Cooke found these types of statements to be consistent with and confirming of the research findings.

The strange case of sports Sports departments are often somewhat set apart from the rest of the newsroom. A number of factors likely contribute to this. Employees here tend to work different hours from many of their counterparts elsewhere in the newsroom. Sports departments are fairly self-sufficient units. People in sports often don’t find themselves on the executive editor’s radar unless they do something great (win an award, ace the Super Bowl coverage) or something terrible (consistently miss deadlines). And the people who work there generally seem to like it that way. We saw exceptions with some sportswriters joining in the Learning Newsroom efforts and playing leadership roles on the steering committees and in the group training sessions. But for the most part, sports departments weren’t that keen on our mission. Because in most newsrooms they took part in the same group training sessions as did the rest of their colleagues, they got the same messages about the need for rethinking the ways newsrooms do business. Whether joining in the work of their colleagues in developing ideas for change or not, they were gaining a new base of knowledge about market pressures on newspapers, how other workplaces have found better ways to function when facing a crisis in declining consumption and other program concepts. Sometimes this seemed to play out in increased levels of conflict that showed up in their follow-up OCIs, for instance as lessened satisfaction in their work place, or responses saying they were less likely to believe the paper would get repeat business in the future. Program facilitators actively tried to engage sports departments more fully in the Learning Newsroom pilot work. They are home to some of the most creative minds in a newsroom. Sadly, with only a few exceptions, we ended the work feeling largely unfulfilled in this goal.

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An unexpected and worrisome signal arose from the Learning Newsroom’s earliest research: In the 10 pilots, younger journalists seemed to be warning that the organizational ills typical in newsrooms today may drive them out of the business. The project team asked Robert A. Cooke, director of Human Synergistics International, who is also one of the co-developers of the Organizational Culture Inventory®, to review the data to see if he agreed. This is his report. February 15, 2007

Learning Newsroom Project: Young Employees

ome of the most interesting results of the Readership Institute’s New Readers project, carried out in 2004, revolved around the differences between young and older readers. Among other things, the direction and strength of the cultures of the newspapers had greater implications for the younger versus older readers. For younger people, culture mattered. Constructive norms were related to the innovativeness of the organization and, in turn, the extent to which young people actually read their newspapers. In contrast, organizational culture appeared to be unrelated to the behavior of older readers; they tended to read newspapers independent of the culture and effectiveness of the organizations publishing them. Three years later, the results of the Learning Newsroom project suggest some similar patterns within newspapers. For younger employees, culture matters as do factors like the innovativeness and adaptability of the newspaper. Based on survey data, interviews, and case analyses of 10 newsrooms, the Learning Newsroom project team has concluded that newspapers are at risk with respect to

younger people leaving not only their current organizations but the industry as well. They note that “young people (29 and below) seem to be signaling they intend to leave the industry within the next two years …‘because the changes we see as necessary aren’t occurring fast enough.’” These conclusions are suggested and supported by the results of the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI), an open-ended Career Interests Inventory, and various meetings and discussions between the project team and employees at 10 newsrooms. While these results appear to be generic and relevant to all newspapers, the relatively small sample makes it difficult to generalize across the industry. Thus, I was asked to review these conclusions by analyzing OCI data on the 10 Learning Newsroom papers, other newspapers (most importantly from the Readership Institute’s 2000 Impact study), and organizations in other industries. My initial analyses focused on some of the outcome questions included in the OCI – most importantly, the item asking “to what extent do you expect to be with this organization two 130

years from now?” While this question asks about intentions to stay with the organization rather than the industry, it is highly relevant to the conclusions cited above. I also looked at responses to a satisfaction item (“to what extent are you satisfied being a member of this organization?”) and a measure of service orientation and adaptability (“to what extent does the organization respond effectively to the changing needs of clients?”). I analyzed the Time 1 (pretest) data provided by all the respondents from the 10 Learning Newsrooms; I did not stratify or filter the data by functional area, years with the organization, or any variable other than age. I simultaneously analyzed these data along with the Readership Impact data on about 90 newspapers and a comparison data set on units of organizations in other industries. (The latter data set is one of Human Synergistics’ OCI research files and includes 3,500+ respondents from hundreds of different organizations.) Results of my analyses indicate that the young people in the Readership Impact study are similar to those in the Learning Newsroom project in that they report that their intentions to stay with their organizations are below “moderate”– that is, below a score of 3 on a 5-point scale where 5 represents very strong intentions to stay. As shown in Table 1, the results for 700+ young employees in the Readership study are slightly less negative than those for their counterparts in the Learning Newsroom sample; nevertheless, the results of the larger study confirm that there is a retention problem on the horizon. Next, the results for young employees in both the Learning Newsroom and Readership Impact samples are less positive than those for employees in the same age group in the OCI research sample (mean score = 3.2). It is clear that the intentions of young people in the newspaper industry to stay with their current organizations are weaker than those of their

peers in other industries. It is important to note that intentions to stay are negatively related to age in all three data sets. Young people are less likely than their older counterparts to report that they plan to stay with their current organizations – regardless of industry. There are probably numerous explanations for this “reality,” most of which transcend industry boundaries. However, there are almost certainly some newspaperspecific factors that enter into the equation given that this trend is more pronounced for newspapers than for other types of organizations. That is, the differences between younger and older employees with respect to their intentions to stay are greater for newspapers than other organizations. In contrast, these differences are not observed with respect to satisfaction. As shown in the middle section of Table 1, young employees working for newspapers are not less satisfied with their organizations than are their peers working for organizations in other industries. Furthermore, younger employees in the Learning Newsrooms are about as satisfied as their more senior co-workers. While the younger people in the Readership sample are somewhat less satisfied than their older peers, these differences parallel those in other industries. Thus, though younger employees report about average levels of satisfaction with their newspapers, their intentions to stay are below average. While not dissatisfied with their organizations, young people working for newspapers apparently are concerned about their organizations’ ability to adapt to changing environmental demands and consumer needs, to compete effectively against technologybased organizations, and to offer them viable, challenging, and secure positions in the future. The bottom section of Table 1 shows that young employees feel that their newspapers are responding to the changing needs of clients only moderately effectively. Their ratings of adaptability are much lower 131

Intention to stay: Satisfaction with organization & organizational adaptability Newspaper Industry vs. Other Industries LEARNING READERSHIP RESEARCH NEWSROOM IMPACT SAMPLE SAMPLE SAMPLE (OTHER IND)

Do you expect to be with this organization two years from now? 20-29

2.7

2.9

3.2

30-39

3.3

3.6

40-49

3.6

3.9

3.8

50-59

3.9

4.2

3.9

60+

3.5

3.6

3.4

Are you satisfied being a member of this organization? 20-29

3.5

3.6

30-39

3.5

3.7

40-49

3.4

3.8

3.7

50-59

3.4

3.8

4.0

60+

4.0

Does the organization respond effectively to the changing needs of clients? 20-29

2.8

3.1

3.5

30-39

2.9

3.1

3.5

40-49

2.8

3.1

3.5

50-59

3.0

3.2

3.6

60+

3.3

3.4

3.6

than those of people working for, and describing, organizations in other industries. While older employees (including those between 40 and 49) agree that their newspapers are not adapting to change, their seniority most likely reduces the impact of this problem on their career decisions. They simply may be less likely to feel the need to switch – or to want to switch – employers, occupations, or industries. Across the 10 Learning Newsrooms, younger as compared to older employees reported slightly stronger Aggressive/Defensive cultural norms and expectations. These normative beliefs are directly and negatively related to intention to stay and indirectly related to such intentions via their negative relationship to perceived organizational adaptability. Certain other organizational factors may exacerbate and accentuate these tendencies, including some that were tapped by special questions added to the OCI for the Learning Newsroom survey. For example, considering all respondents together, stronger intentions to leave are reported by those who feel their newspapers lacked a clear vision for the future and failed to communicate that vision and/or gain commitment to it. Intentions to leave are related also to feelings that conflicts/differences cannot be discussed, bold ideas to improve content cannot be suggested, and the quality and impact of the paper cannot be candidly addressed. Similarly, results of analyses on the Readership Impact data indicate Survey Items and Research Sample results are from the Organizational Culture Inventory‚ (R.A. Cooke & J.C. Lafferty (1987), Plymouth MI: Human Synergistics International. Copyright © 1987; All Rights Reserved. Learning Newsroom (2007) results are from studies conducted by the American Press Institute and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Readership Impact (2000) results are from studies conducted by the Readership Institute at the Media Management Center, Northwestern University.

that intentions to stay are related to strong organizational missions, employee involvement and training/development, respect for members and diversity, and leaders who command respect. When these factors are missing, employees are more likely to report that they do not plan to stay with the newspaper. As noted above, the OCI question on “intention to stay” focuses on the respondent’s current organization rather than industry. Nevertheless, the results are likely to be relevant to the industry level for two reasons. First, the intentions of young employees to stay with their current newspapers are suboptimal throughout the industry. In the Learning Newsroom sample, employees of only 1 (out of 10) newspapers report intentions to stay as strong as our historical average (based on our cross-industry OCI research sample). Similarly, in the Readership Impact sample, employees at fewer than 15 percent of the newspapers report average or higher than average intentions to stay. Second, employees across newspapers, regardless of age, view organizational adaptability — which, along with culture, is possibly the most important factor driving intentions to leave — as a problem. At the time of the Learning Newsroom pretest, none of the 10 papers were rated as average or above average in terms of responding to the changing needs of clients. (The historical average is 3.53 on a 5point scale.) Similarly, fewer than 6 percent of the newspapers in the Readership Impact sample were viewed by their employees as being

average or above average along this critical dimension of effectiveness. Thus, the data strongly indicate that newspaper employees in the 20 to 29 age range are more likely than their older colleagues and their peers in other industries to find themselves in new jobs, organizations, and even industries within the next couple of years. Consistent with the conclusions of the Learning Newsroom project team, it does appear that young staff members are signaling that they are considering leaving not only their newsrooms but the industry as well. While the wording of the relevant survey items focuses more on organizations than industries, the data I have analyzed suggest that young employees do not have much to gain by moving from one newspaper to another. Unless they believe that they can identify and land a job with one of the few constructive and adaptable newspapers in the country, it would be reasonable for them to search for new jobs with organizations in other industries. As the data indicate, they may intuitively feel that such jobs would provide them with more clarity around vision and mission, involvement in decision making, and developmental opportunities. This “drain” of talent can be reversed only to the extent that newspapers move toward more constructive cultures, invest more in the development of their managers and employees, effect structural changes to improve communication and involvement in decision making, and rely on such improvements to more effectively adapt to change, improve quality, and enhance readership.

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PROJECT OUTCOMES

he staffs in the pilot newsrooms took dozens of routes in responding to their editors’ invitations to suggest smarter ways to work and better ways to serve readers. Sarasota Herald-Tribune Executive Editor Mike Connelly came to end every Learning Newsroom group training session with the charge: “Go forth and innovate.” Work across the pilot newsrooms included opening up project or enterprise reporting to a broader segment of journalists, sponsoring post-mortems on big projects and holding staff-wide brainstorming sessions to discuss new areas of coverage. Often with a focus on increasing online resources, they suggested beat restructurings and other realignments. They improved orientation programs, launched mentor programs and helped generate hundreds of additional hours of staff training. They increased interactions with readers and, with management’s blessing, launched new products aimed at younger audiences. They updated online offerings more frequently, increased the use of multimedia, launched new blogs and in some cases proposed revamping their newspaper’s Web sites. Some conversations led to reassessments of wire-service and syndicated content. Operationally they proposed improvements to budget meetings, contributed to smarter scheduling that served the organization but also factored in the needs of more individuals and improved deadline performance. They even found ways to help people accomplish more in less time and go home earlier. The work routinely took them beyond the newsroom. In several pilots, journalists began to partner more frequently with their newspaper’s marketing department to better pitch their best work. A couple of the pilots asked human resources to support their efforts at upgrading evaluation systems to make them more germane to life in today’s newsrooms. Others won publisher support for the biggest ideas that had ramifications across the organization. “We have a creative newsroom, but its creativity has grown exponentially as a result of our experience with the Learning Newsroom, and I see stuff coming from the floor of our newsroom now that quite honestly leaves me standing in awe,” said Dana Robbins, then-editor of The Hamilton Spectator. That newsroom’s concept for an Innovation Time Bank, a plan to create a virtual research and development department within the newsroom, was an impressive idea. Sarasota’s Connelly had an interest in seeing new products come about as a result of his newsroom’s involvement in the partnership and wasn’t disappointed. “The biggest outcome we’ve had is what I’ve described as bottom-up product development,” he said. “We’ve had several products invented that never would have been invented without the help of the Learning Newsroom and others that would have turned out much differently, and not as well, without the involvement of the Learning Newsroom.” He describes the evolution of one new venture called IbisEye.com, a hurricane-tracking site: “That was created by an investigative reporter who just decided he wanted to do it. He came in not really to ask permission, more to tell us he was going to do it. He rallied support within the company and he rallied support at corporate to invent it in less than two months,” Connelly said. The site went on to win a Knight-Batten Award of distinction and was mentioned at Time.com as 134

one of the best sites in the country taking advantage of Google Maps. The site, he said, offers “substantial commercial opportunities, as well.” The changes in the environment also were celebrated by the journalists in the pilot newsrooms. “People really feel now they can pipe up and voice their opinion with an idea, that they can take it and start running with it and they don’t just have to sit at their desk,” said Kelly Kearsley, a reporter at The News Tribune in Tacoma. “I think that our newsroom is a lot more reader-focused,” said Emily Thickstun, a reporter and copy editor on The Herald-Times staff in Bloomington, Ind. “I think I’ve been able to take a lot of risks and have been challenged to do better work, and it’s more fun that way.”

OTHER PROJECT OUTCOMES Though not by any means a complete accounting of project outcomes, editors and staff in the pilots also attribute the following to conversations started during their Learning Newsroom work:

The Herald-Times Bloomington, Ind.

Circulation: Single copy up 13 consecutive months through January 2007. Online audience: Unique visitors up 125 percent from January 2006 to January 2007. Page views up 18 percent; paid circulation up 35 percent. Training: Appointed training coordinator, created formal training plan, set annual minimum (16 hours in 2007), delivered more than 1,100 hours in 2006 to a newsroom of 47 FTEs Online: Launched new products (Mice Pace, Hoosier Scoop, Chalkboard, Slugged,

Courtroom Insider, etc.). Strengthened “Web first” focus. Increased interaction between Web and print. Enhanced cross-platform promotions. System/process improvement: Reviewed beat structure, established reporting teams, created some “hybrid” positions such as copy editor/reporter. Improved photo assignment process and employee evaluations. Broadened access to news budgets and coverage planning logs. Used work to bolster readership growth efforts. Communication: Expanded dissemination of information around business performance, organizational strategy. Exported Learning Newsroom concepts to Kafa, sister newspaper in the Ukraine.

The Telegraph Nashua, N.H.

Online: Created multimedia team. Generated hundreds of slideshows, audio and visual packages. Increased frequency of content updates, more “breaking news alerts.” Launched blogs. Systems/process improvement: Decreased focus on production statistics. Revamped selection process for enterprise projects to involve more staffers. Made physical improvements to newsroom. Launched peer-judged Great Acts of Journalism recognition program. Increased formal and informal feedback. Innovation: Instituted off-site brainstorming sessions.

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project, the Innovation Time Bank, now in midlaunch, will allow anyone in the newsroom the opportunity to spend up to two weeks paid time on research or innovation project of their own design. Includes process for review and approval of suggested projects. The goal: “an instant R&D department.” Training: Tools and Training Committee generated hundreds of hours of developmental opportunities, much of it peer-to-peer. Staff now tracks training, oversees spending of onethird of newsroom training budget. Formed writers group.

Dave Brooks’ Math for Journalists session met The Telegraph’s demands for more-focused training.

Training: Sponsored a number of sessions to help staff develop multimedia skills. Surveyed staff and created model for more focused employee development plans.

Asheville Citizen-Times Asheville, N.C.

Systems/process improvement: Improved desk scheduling and workflow issues around increased online commitments. Worked with human resources to suggest improvements to performance management system. Experimented with “Think Time” voucher system to let staff break away from routines, facilitate innovation, improve planning. Communication: Increased staff engagement in decision-making around special coverage opportunities. Revamped newsroom awards program. Launched newsletter.

Online: Revamped Web site design. Revised Web strategy to include more frequent updates, breaking news bulletins, increased reader contributions. Introduced multimedia, blogs. Created training opportunity with Web team rotations. Communication: Created The Idea Factory, an intranet blog/forum/test site to facilitate engagement in newsroom change initiatives. Launched full staff brainstorming sessions on big projects (for example, the paper’s threeyear poverty series). Staged formal postmortems on big story coverage. Engaged in more open discussion of competitive threats, strategies, etc.; E-mailed 1A story list to full staff each evening. Organized and facilitated discussion with advertising leadership on new ad styles, placement. Systems/process improvement: Increased expectations that managers be “broadly and continuously consultative” and linked to performance evaluations. Created a monthly, staff-driven awards program, with teams of frontline staff and managers rotating responsibility for judging. The prizes: a coffee mug and a $50 gift certificate, with winners’ names going into a year-end drawing for a week off with pay.

Training: Increased and improved training, including new employee orientation. Experimented with point system, incentives in tracking progress. Tied training more closely to performance management systems.

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Innovation: Steering committee sponsored intensive consultation project, Nine Days to Change the News, to engage large segments of staff in newsroom/newspaper reinvention called Revolution 2. [The staff noted 18 months of planning was devoted to the first Revolution, a revamp launched in late 2003; while Revolution 2, with broader goals, was achieved in less than eight weeks.] Another

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Systems/process improvement: Facilitated staff input into office restructuring, beat revisions, online improvements, print redesign impacts and other important change initiatives. Suggested safeguards to protect against plagiarism, including staff assistance in vetting candidates, adopted by management. The Gallina is used to recognize special efforts by the Corpus Christi staff.

Communication/innovation: Launched intranet site and blog for continuous brainstorming on operational improvements, new content ideas that better serve today’s readers. Started conversations aimed at increasing staff diversity, improving news budget process, fixes to rough spots in copy flow and production. Launched the Lunch Club, a peerjudged awards program.

contest, large-newspaper category. Launched peer-to-peer recognition program to note special effort via a tacky, traveling trophy called The Gallina. Systems/process improvement: Applied SWAT team approach to solving production bottlenecks. Reassessed features department time/workflow issues. Inventoried staff-wide technology needs. Led office cleanup and housekeeping improvements.

Training: Created newsroom library/resource center. Gave staff oversight over one-third of training budget. Sponsored Spanish classes and other training sessions. Improved orientation. Increased focus on development opportunities, with special emphasis on multimedia and online presentation of news.

Communication: Instituted staffwide postmortems on major coverage projects. Improved tracking of “who’s where, when” through the work day. Increased interactions with younger audiences. Increased input to management on hiring decisions. Provided input on office remodeling. Launched monthly interdepartmental potlucks. Facilitated conversations across departments on a number of topics including human resources policies, Q&A with chief financial officer.

Culture: Diagnostic shows large segments of staff moved from defensive to constructive styles (See article by Editor Mike Jenner on page 148).

Training: Set 12-hour annual minimum for each employee. Established tracking process. Delivered hundreds of new hours of training. Improved orientation practice. Networked for cross-training with other Scripps newspaper staffs.

Lincoln, Neb.

Innovation: Realigned staff, coverage and presentation to increase appeal to younger news consumers through new 402 feature sections and creation of MYX beat. “Re-engineered” other jobs and beats to find more resources for online and enterprise reporting.

Bakersfield celebrated positive movement on their follow-up culture survey with milkshakes for the entire newsroom.

Lincoln Journal Star

Corpus Christi Caller-Times Corpus Christi, Tex.

Innovation: Amazing Enterprise Race – a staffdriven, multimedia reporting initiative to improve processes around enterprise involved cross-departmental, five-person teams. One project garnered Katie Award finalist status and a quarterly win in the Scripps editorial

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Training: Created training plan and method for tracking hundreds of new hours of newsroom training. Gave oversight of one-third of training budget to staff committee. Improved orientation process, including creating new handbooks by job discipline. Expanded communication of lessons learned from off-site training opportunities.

Systems/process improvement: Adopted universal budget. Revised accuracy policy. Improved planning of “Sunday Specials.” Trained staff on design software. Improved photo assignment process. Reduced number of “routine process” government stories. Working to increase diversity of coverage. Communication: Instituted post-mortems on big reporting projects, daily critique shared with full staff via intranet site, several “town hall-style” meetings on issues of staff concern and holiday potluck. Updated staff phone lists. Launched informal readership research project in cooperation with University of Nebraska marketing class. Online: Developed an early reporting shift, more frequent content updates, special training on writing for the Web. Soliciting more community content.

Journal Star realigned staff, coverage and presentation to appeal to younger news consumers through new 402 feature sections.

The News Tribune Tacoma, Wash.

Online: Launched new blogs, including Grit City, written by twenty-something staffers. Improved cross-platform content promotion. Launched weeklong Web/multimedia internships.

Training: Designated portion of training funds for staff-driven programs. Considering 8-hour annual training minimum. Revived brown-bag series. Creating knowledge bank of staff talents such as foreign language. Formed mentoring partnerships.

Systems/process: Revamping staff evaluation process. Offered quarterly updates on performance goals. Improved morning critique for increased focus on readership goals. Communications: Introduced “Yada, yada” intranet newsroom forum for critiques, tips, memos. Posted online internal staff photo directory. Innovation: Instituted staffwide “blank page” brainstorming sessions including an assessment of content aimed at younger audiences. Offered staff-driven awards with revamped categories to encourage innovation, including: The Webbie, for great use of technology in storytelling; The Edgie, for surprise, whimsy and risk taking; Hidden Gem, for reader-focused approaches to news.

Tacoma's "blank page" staffwide brainstorming sessions yielded worksheets full of ideas such as these related to online improvements.

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San Jose Mercury News San Jose, Calif.

Systems/process improvements: Scheduled earlier work day to accommodate online improvements, greater emphasis on 24-hour news cycle. Increased e-mail capacity for every staffer. Performed newsroom-wide cleanup and redistribution of storage space. Suggested dayside staffing changes to facilitate earlier deadlines and copy flow. Launched drive for more 1A readers. Broadened participation in Web conversations. Suggesting other changes (job descriptions, coverage, etc.) to best serve readers with current resources. Innovation: Revamped quarterly awards to a peer-judged system. Evaluating online coverage for increased opportunities in new ownership environment. Communications: Facilitated a number of conversations related to 2006 sale and transition, including meetings with Publisher George Riggs and then-Knight Ridder CEO Tony Ridder. Created interdepartmental socials and department-head lunches to break down traditional barriers. Initiated conversations on 1A story selection process. Helped broaden participation in conversations around online improvements.

Marian Liu listens as fellow writer Mike Antonucci recaps the reporting coverage that earned her recognition in September 2006 in the San Jose Mercury News' new peer-judged quarterly awards program. Liu is fluent in several languages, including the lingo of “crunk” – a type of hip-hop music, Antonucci teased.

Training: Led initiative to coordinate efforts with Melissa Jordan, senior editor for recruiting and training, to develop skills for a 21st century newsroom. Increased staff input into training and development needs. Improved tracking of informal training such as brown-bag meetings and department-level sessions.

Sarasota Herald-Tribune Sarasota, Fla.

Innovation: Increased “bottom-up product development” including IbisEye.com, a hurricane tracking Web site. Redesigned Ticket, weekly entertainment guide, with edgier focus on younger audiences. Created Superman movie poster project, a design team effort that drove increased single-copy sales and produced $15,000 in advertising revenue. Created cross-departmental “H-T Plus 5,” an innovations team focused five years into the future, charged with targeting top ideas throughout the news organization. Communication: Increased interaction with leadership via staffwide and smaller group sessions. Executive Editor Mike Connelly launched blog. Instituted publisher updates on business performance. Improved intranet Web site’s utility, organization, navigation; Revamped online staff directory. Facilitated relocation to new building with detailed layout of who’s where. Created several projects to improve communication, planning, cross-training and cross-promotional efforts to benefit converged news operations (print, television, online), and between downtown and bureau staffs.

IbisEye.com, a hurricane tracking Web site, is one of the innovative new products developed at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. increased multimedia promotions in print. Researched budget technology and other hardware options for improved operations. Training: Launched “Crash Course,” an ambitious staff-directed training series. Will incorporate frontline efforts into formal newsroom program in 2007 that will establish an annual training requirement, track hours and tie development efforts to annual performance goals.

Systems/process: Improved photo assignment process, analyzed production concerns,

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Every staff-led committee facilitated change but none was more egoless or focused than G12 – the dozen founding members of the steering committee at The Mercury News. The team helped build consensus around such major initiatives as a move to an earlier work day during a time when the newsroom had every reason to be distracted.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Michael Bazeley, San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, California

robably the last thing anyone in our newsroom wanted in the fall of 2005 was to be a guinea pig in an industry experiment. Our paper was roiling. Management was offering buyouts to employees, with the threat that layoffs might soon follow. And our corporate parent, Knight Ridder, was imploding, hurtling down a path that would lead to its eventual sale. Improving newsroom culture was the last thing on anyone’s mind. We were just hanging on for dear life. But the year we spent as a Learning Newsroom may have been a small blessing in disguise. It forced us to think critically about ourselves at a time when emotions were running high. It helped us understand how the rest of the newspaper operated – hello, circulation and advertising – at a time when we needed a broader understanding of the business side. And it let us imagine innovative ways to reshape our workplace at a time when all the news around us was doom and gloom. It wasn’t an easy year as a Learning Newsroom. The employee buyouts, followed by the sale of our company and the paper made our jobs

difficult. It’s hard to summon the energy to think Big Thoughts when you’re worried about your own future. And it’s difficult to plot change for a newsroom when external forces are buffeting you at every turn. “There were times when we needed to look further and further into the future, and we just couldn’t,’’ said Dale Harvison, a page designer in the business department. “So that affected some discussions.’’ To lead the discussion about change in our newsroom, we organized a steering committee dubbed “G12” (Gang of 12). It included designers, copy editors, reporters and online folks. Our mandate and our plans shifted often, sometimes in response to the periodic Learning Newsroom training sessions, sometimes because committee members realized we needed to shift gears. We reached out to the rest of the staff and enthusiastically organized half a dozen subcommittees tasked with finding ways to improve areas such as online and content. We then watched some of the committees struggle to gain momentum because the newsroom was so distracted. 140

But we can point to some accomplishments, including:

gram facilitators said. We debated the extent of our authority in the newsroom. Our top editors vowed support for our efforts. But we didn’t exist on any official organization chart, so our clout had limits. Some of us are still debating whether we were timid in our efforts or simply pragmatic. Reporter Mike Antonucci laments that we didn’t do more “bomb-throwing.’’ Indeed, we didn’t do a lot of what we wanted. We probably set our expectations too high and wanted to do too much. The reality is that the newsroom was fatigued, and big changes take time. We lost more than 50 colleagues in the November 2005 buyouts. That was emotionally draining, and it meant fewer employees to do the same work. Even finding time when everyone could meet wasn’t easy. But Learning Newsroom Project Director Vickey Williams reminded us repeatedly not to diminish our accomplishments; that because we launched as Pilot No. 9 near the end of the project calendar, the Mercury News was on a slightly compressed schedule and our situation – buyouts, sale, sale again – was unique. More than a year later, we are back where we started, in many ways. Layoffs have cut into the staff more, and people are weary. Our G12 committee has lost members, and we’re discussing whether to regroup and push forward. Regardless of what happens, though, we came out of our Learning Newsroom year stronger, Vo says. “I guess the Learning Newsroom taught us tools that would be useful in buyouts, sales, layoffs and calm waters – should we ever encounter them again,’’ Vo said. “That we need to be both ambitious and patient, determined, yet flexible. And that we, not shareholders, shape this newsroom.’’

> Earlier deadlines and earlier morning planning meetings. The goal was to be more responsive to news and, hopefully, get people home earlier at night. > Shifting control of our quarterly newsroom awards from the newsroom editors to a rotating team of reporters, copy editors and designers. The awards are now more bottom-up than top-down – and more quirky as a result. > Expanded the capacity of everyone’s e-mail inbox by a factor of 10. It seems trivial. But a large chunk of many reporters’ days was spent wrangling with constantly overstuffed inboxes. > A brown-bag meeting with assigning editors to discuss how stories make it to 1A and other issues. We also talked a lot about who should influence stories – how they’re conceived, shaped and played in the paper. Should reporters have more say? How do we fend off bad ideas? And we cajoled departments into hosting open-house mixers where people could take a break from the daily grind for food, drink and a chance to meet people they may not know. “I think the whole Learning Newsroom process helped everyone in editorial cope and survive with what was going on,’’ said Dennis Akizuki, a metro assigning editor. “People tended to withdraw because of what was happening. And then you had these mixers, and it drew people out. They were little things, but amid all the doom and gloom, they helped people get away from it a bit.’’ Metro reporter Kim Vo agreed: “In a place that’s so top-down, it made people a little more approachable.” On G12, we got along, but we didn’t always agree. We grappled with the question of whether to focus on cultural change or more concrete improvements, and whether the latter could really accomplish the former, as pro-

Michael Bazeley is senior Web editor of the San Jose Mercury News in San Jose, Calif. E-mail: MBazeley@MercuryNews.com 141

Susan Goldberg wrote this piece in early November 2006 to capture her personal reflections on the year her staff participated in the Learning Newsroom. It was a year when the newspaper was sold and the staff was cut, yet the newsroom maintained a sense of personal control.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Susan Goldberg, San Jose Mercury News San Jose, California

ct. Communicate. Listen. Act. Simple steps, all. But they added up to leadership lessons in our Learning Newsroom experience, for myself and others leading our newsroom through a difficult year. Our newsroom began its Learning Newsroom experience by taking the Organizational Culture Inventory on Nov. 1, 2005 – the same day Knight Ridder’s largest shareholder publicly urged the board of directors to sell the company, setting off a chain of events that would shape our Learning Newsroom year. Our first decision was whether to continue the project at all, given the uncertainty our staff would be going through. We decided to act. We wanted to challenge the newsroom to step up, engage and chart the future, even though we did not know what that future would hold. In the 12 months since, we’ve been through buyouts, the sale of the com-

pany – twice – and now, looming layoffs and consolidation. At the same time, we made strategic hires of new talent and produced great journalism, including work that won national honors in multimedia, breaking news, feature writing and design. Our leadership team has tried to keep the focus on the important work the newsroom does every day to serve our community, and on the stake every member of our staff has in our future. The Learning Newsroom helped us keep that focus, in part by serving as an outlet for what I’ve come to call “constructive bitching.” We did the communication segment as the first of our five training sessions. It was a vivid reminder that no matter how often we as newsroom leaders think we have communicated a message, there’s always someone in the room who seems to be hearing it for the first time. With courage and candor, our staff shared their fears, 142

complaints, ideas – and pressed for more communication from leaders about strategy and vision. We built on the Learning Newsroom sessions with small-group meetings that we have continued all year, with each new challenge that we faced. Those meetings have become especially important as we’ve had to discuss something no one ever wanted to talk about: layoffs. But as much as people did not want to hear the message, they all appreciated the access and communication. It’s a lesson I’ll never forget. If you ask people for input, you have to listen. That’s another key lesson of our Learning Newsroom experience. You won’t always like what they have to say, but it’s essential as a leader to listen – and to act when action is needed. We were asked to think about whether the Learning Newsroom concepts had taken hold and would have a lasting impact. Given the tumult in our newsroom, I don’t know, but I’ve seen some encouraging signs: > The staff-led peer awards committee that grew out of the Learning Newsroom had scheduled a presentation in late October to honor colleagues. The date turned out to be just three days after our layoff announcement. They mulled over whether to cancel or put it off, but

decided to act – to use their empowerment in a constructive way and focus on the positive. > The next week, on Halloween, our features department hosted a Learning Newsroom-sponsored open house to introduce new hires to the rest of the staff and spread a little cheer. They went all-out with a cotton candy machine, carnival games and costumes; it was a warm and welcoming atmosphere that exemplified the best of our newsroom culture. > Our Learning Newsroom steering committee is focusing on the content of the newspaper and has proposed to the senior management team a new system for getting more good reads on 1A. They acknowledge the constraints of leaner times but have come up with a smart idea that will get our serious consideration. To conclude, we’re ending 2006 by reorganizing our newsroom once again. We will need the engagement of every employee to realize our ambition of excellent journalism that serves our community. That is a lasting lesson from the Learning Newsroom. Susan Goldberg is executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News in San Jose, Calif. E-mail: SGoldberg@MercuryNews.com

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Publishers find it easy to buy into the goals of a Learning Newsroom. They often made time to drop in during group training sessions, and they outlined their organization’s challenges and strategies during the business literacy sessions. Cheryl Dell was particularly encouraging of the efforts of Pilot No. 8.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Cheryl Dell, The News Tribune Tacoma, Washington

remember the day our top editors came to talk to me about becoming a Learning Newsroom pilot. It was a way to get our staff involved in problem solving, they said. It would help us listen to our audience and reach the goals that we'd already defined for ourselves, they said. It would be a lot of work, but it would be worth it, they promised. If I knew then what I know now, I would have said “yes” a lot sooner. The Learning Newsroom has helped us in all the ways they promised; it has permanently changed our newsroom. The session on business literacy was eye-opening for our staff. Senior managers at the paper were asked to talk about organizational challenges beyond the newsroom. We wanted our news folks to understand the implications of the Sarbanes/Oxley legislation on our finance department. We wanted them to know how many people there are in our market selling

against the newspaper. And we wanted them to know how many people cancel their subscriptions each year. In short, we wanted them to understand how connected each department is to the others. As the year progressed, committees were established to tackle issues that news folks identified as important. One of the successful outcomes was a new blog called “Grit City - You'll like Tacoma.” This reader favorite is written by five staffers, all younger than 30. Blog discussions range from the quickest way to cure a cold to the best online dating site to the best places to buy a hamburger. It is written by young people for young people, and it has been a great success. In its first month, the blog had more than 10,000 page views! The newsroom also tackled perennial issues like insufficient communication. This is a tough issue for managers who feel like they communicate 144

well and for staffers who feel like they aren't in the loop. The committee that tackled this issue determined that both groups were right, but those frontline staffers also decided that they needed to come up with a better way to close the gap. Their answer to the problem was an intranet forum called “Yada, Yada, Yada” that contains everything from daily critiques to tear sheet contest entries to minutes from staff meetings. The group tackled a number of other daily challenges, too. They made progress on some; others were dropped. The learning newsroom process forced senior editors to identify and articulate our organizational values. In our case, we believe that it is NOT acceptable to stay ignorant of the challenges around us. Our business is changing and it is important for our employees to understand the obstacles we face as an industry. There is a reason the word ‘learning’ is in the

Learning Newsroom. We think it is OK – helpful even - to complain about things. But mindless griping is not welcome. We believe that if you have the energy to complain about something, you also should have the energy to help provide a solution. One of the most important things we got out of this experience is a new tool for solving some of the everyday issues that come up in any organization. We've always believed that more is better when it comes to ideas; the Learning Newsroom process has formalized a way for all levels of the newsroom to communicate those opinions. It allows people to focus on the important work of the newsroom instead of on the process that sometimes gets in the way. Cheryl Dell is publisher of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. E-mail: Cheryl.Dell@TheNewsTribune.com

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Knowing more about the advertising impact of department-store consolidation or the cost of retaining one subscriber can give journalists a greater appreciation of business operations – and a bigger stake in their newspaper’s future.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Karen Peterson, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Washington

he business literacy training module was a critical first step in convincing our staff that it needed to change. In our veteran newsroom, too many of our folks were perfectly happy performing their jobs the way they always had. They were pretty good at it, and readers seemed reasonably satisfied. The industry hand-wringing about the demise of the print newspaper was for someone else to worry about. Their managers’ concerns about the loss of young readers they’d heard before. Suggestions to make stories shorter for time-starved readers were an affront to their journalism. Any financial troubles at The News Tribune surely were the fault of someone in advertising or circulation. Yada, yada, yada. Then they heard our circulation director announce our first anticipated circulation losses. He listed the reasons subscribers said they quit – chief among them that they didn’t find the newspaper all that necessary in their daily lives. The director explained how much

it cost the company to sell a subscription and how many times over he had to sell each one because so many people quit after their initial 13-week deal. The staff was taken aback. Our finance director gave staffers a high-level look at the budget and how the company spends its money – how salary money is different from expense money and capital money. He told them the company spends $14,000 per employee on benefits, that having security guards costs $200,000 a year, and that it costs more than $250,000 just to put out a single day’s paper. The staff was surprised. Our advertising director explained the challenges of bringing in the money that keeps the newspaper running. Department stores are consolidating, meaning there are fewer of them taking out lucrative full-page ads. Direct mail companies are eating into our insert business. Telecom companies are losing confidence in newspapers’ ability to deliver an audience share. The staff was concerned. The business literacy module did 146

two things for our newsroom. First, it began to explain to newsroom staffers why we crazy managers make some of the decisions we do. Shane Fitzgerald, managing editor of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, saw similar eye-opening results in its Learning Newsroom experience. “People don’t understand how the business part works,” he said. “I certainly didn’t until I got into management. And they understand now how we can afford to have our newsroom remodeled, but we’ll still complain about the $14 lunch that someone puts on their tab.” More importantly, the business literacy module scared the hell out of our staff. It was exactly what they needed. It wasn’t the “industry” they were hearing about this time. It was The News Tribune’s struggles. And it wasn’t only the business side at fault. The old way of producing a newspaper wasn’t working any more. The business literacy module was the first step in convincing folks that our ship was taking on water, and they all needed to begin bailing. Of course, not everyone saw the light. Avoidance and denial and

lethargy remained for some. But several staffers commented after the session how much they’d learned. And for many, the wheels began to turn. Our fledgling steering committee asked young staffers to critique the newspaper, and from that developed a hip living-in-Tacoma blog written by five of them, all under age 30. The committee developed a list of questions we should be asking during our morning critique to focus more on gaining readership. Staffers started suggesting improvements to the top of our front page so it would sell better out of the box. A newsroom concerned about selling the paper? Holy cow. Business literacy is something we managers could have shared with our staffs a long time ago. There’s no reason we have to figure this all out by ourselves and then dictate a plan. Each of us has a room full of smart people who together will think of solutions we never would have seen. Not only is it nice to be able to share this burden, our business depends on it. Karen Peterson is managing editor of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. E-mail: Karen.Peterson@TheNewsTribune.com

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Along with anecdotal stories of change, hard research data were used to track results in the pilot newsrooms.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Mike Jenner, The Bakersfield Californian, Bakersfield, California

hen we entered the Learning Newsroom program, we were cautioned about keeping realistic expectations. The program facilitators warned that our beginning diagnostic survey portrayed a newsroom so steeped in its aggressive-defensive behaviors it would take three to five years of sustained effort to move it to a constructive culture. As the program progressed, I wasn’t really focused on the messages from our Organizational Cultural Inventory®, the benchmark survey. In fact, I was more concerned about managing all the competing initiatives we had under way. We were about to launch what we were calling a “radical redesign” that was causing us to significantly change not only basic assumptions about design and picture use, but all our production workflows as well. And we were about to completely overhaul our operation to fully embrace the Web, which would mean changing not just our structure but also the behavior of every reporter and editor in the building. In the midst of all this, two senior

editors moved on to jobs in other organizations. We had so much going on that I worried that we’d bitten off too much and actually was afraid the Learning Newsroom might suffer. To some extent, I think it did, in that the staff had a hard time shouldering the additional responsibility of committee work and implementing initiatives. I think at various points during the program all of us felt varying degrees of “change fatigue.” Nonetheless, we charged ahead. Thanks to significant planning and training, we successfully launched our redesign, and it seemed to be a hit with readers. And we implemented our reorganization, which really helped us change our focus to make the Web co-equal with print. Throughout this period, we were buffeted by other events and distractions. One of the most significant involved our discovery that one of our reporters had committed numerous acts of plagiarism and fabrication. That was a crushing embarrassment that devastated the staff and editors alike. It had the effect of pulling us 148

together, however, and gave the staff an opportunity to propose and help implement changes in our hiring and editing processes – all in the spirit of the Learning Newsroom. We continued to evolve and adapt in the face of all these initiatives and developments. And it was clear the change was significant. For example, in the first full year after our launch of our Web initiative, fully two-thirds of the staff (not just reporters or photographers) had been involved in producing some form of multimedia for the Web. Every reporter had shot video; some had learned to edit it. And virtually everyone in the news division had a daily role in contributing to the Web. Through all this we hadn’t thought twice about our cultural index. We didn’t have time. But I knew we had changed. You could see it in the product and feel it in the room. It was almost an afterthought when we received the box full of blank questionnaires. Eighteen months after we benchmarked our culture, it was time to take the inventory again. Several weeks later, we got the news: No fewer than 55 of the 83 staffers taking the survey had recorded significant, measurable movement toward a constructive culture. Some of

the movement was off the charts. Not everything was rosy, however. Some of the most resistant attitudes showed up in the ranks of middle and upper managers. Clearly, we still have work to do. But our Learning Newsroom facilitators, Vickey Williams and Pete Meyer, told us we came remarkably close to a “constructive” classification for the entire newsroom – in just 18 months. What happened here? I think all the changes we forced on the newsroom showed that we meant business, that we were serious about letting go of the past, willing to take risks and intent on confronting our future. But I also believe the Learning Newsroom played an important role in achieving this cultural change. Throughout all these other changes, it provided an outlet for the staff and served to magnify our efforts to change. Combined with all the other changes we absorbed, it was an important ingredient that helped move our culture forward in a significant and meaningful way. Mike Jenner is executive editor of The Bakersfield Californian in Bakersfield, Calif. E-mail: MJenner@Bakersfield.com

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Sometimes changing the culture means taking personal responsibility for keeping the workplace clean.

MY LEARNING NEWSROOM: Allison Pollan, Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Corpus Christi, Texas

ournalists are not known for their cleanliness. Beyond the towering stacks of paper and assorted clutter found on any newsroom surface, there is one shared resource that embodies this unseemly trait: the newsroom refrigerator. The mess at the Caller-Times went beyond the fridge. During a Learning Newsroom training session on systems and process improvements, staffers were asked to cite areas that needed improvement on a Post-It note. The Post-Its then were grouped according to topics. Alongside sticky notes centering on training, creativity and multimedia grew an even bigger grouping: cleanliness. The Learning Newsroom Housekeeping Subcommittee resulted from this initial session. The team of five newsroom employees – four women and one man – met regularly at first to tackle the bigger issues: an upcoming newsroom remodeling project, a broken urinal in the men’s room, a community cleaning bucket and the filthy newsroom fridge. The group used some light-hearted signage to keep its goals top-of-mind with staff, including a graphic encouraging basic courtesy on behalf of the next person who follows you in the office restroom. The Learning Newsroom principles translated even to this housekeeping committee. The bottom-up style worked. Solutions were offered and acted upon. Small things everyone complained about – but no one took the initiative to fix – got fixed.

Today, the subcommittee meets as needed. The refrigerator remains relatively clean, thanks to different volunteers who clean the fridge each month. Next goal: the microwave. Allison Pollan is city editor of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in Corpus Christi, Tex. E-mail: PollanA@Caller.com

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Some tools

TWO CHANGE MODELS

n addition to the signals of change that emerged through comparisons of the Organizational Culture Inventory “before and after” surveys, the Learning Newsroom pilots also found it useful to consider their progress compared to two well-known models for assessing change. They are psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s widely known “stages of grief” model – with Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance as the stages of progression – and John Kotter’s eight-stage Process for Creating Major Change. The steps delineated by Kubler-Ross might at first seem a farfetched comparison to the stages of evolution one might see in a newsroom workforce. But to some degree, change is always a matter of giving up past behaviors and beliefs and entering a new way of thinking. With that understanding, it is clear that the work of the Learning Newsroom had to acknowledge some degree of mourning for what was, as journalists adapted to what will be in the successful newsrooms of the future. To the Kubler-Ross list, training partner Pete Meyer added a sixth category: Personal Control: “The added step fits in a work environment where one key culture goal is to get associates re-engaged and re-committed to the success of the organization and to their career expectations.” For example, in a newsroom at the 18-month mark of the project, visual people – photographers, designers, graphic artists – might be seen charging toward acceptance or even personal control, while their colleagues on the copy desk might be stuck between the anger and bargaining phases. A second valuable model comes from the work of Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter. He has identified the steps required to produce successful change in any organization:

The Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major Change 1. Establishing a sense of urgency 2. Creating the guiding coalition 3. Developing a vision and strategy 4. Communicating the change vision 5. Empowering broad-based action 6. Generating short-term wins 7. Consolidating gains and producing more change 8. Anchoring new approaches in the culture This model perfectly tracks the goals and intentions in the pilot partnerships. During each training session – from the sharing of each partner’s initial Organizational Culture Inventory and career interests surveys, through training and exercises in communication, business literacy, innovation, systems and process analysis, and time management/workout – and with each visit with the steering committee, we tried to further the work precisely along the route Kotter describes. In both models, all the stages must be hit. Just as the Kubler-Ross model 153

stages are sequential, Kotter’s model is as well. Here are two quotes from Kotter worth considering: “Successful change of any magnitude goes through all eight stages, usually in the sequence shown. ... Although one normally operates in multiple phases at once, skipping even a single step or getting too far ahead without a solid base almost always creates problems.” (Leading Change, page 23) “The first four steps in the transformation process help defrost a hardened status quo. ... Phases five to seven then introduce many new practices. The last stage grounds the changes in the corporate culture and helps make them stick.” (Leading Change, page 22) Sponsors of change efforts like the Learning Newsroom also will likely discern Kotter’s eight stages at work. Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross first introduced and explored the now-famous idea of the five stages of grief in her book, On Death & Dying (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone) 1969. More information is available at www.ekrfoundation.org and www.elisabethkublerross.com. John Kotter’s book, Leading Change (Harvard Business School Press) 1996, spells out in detail the eight stages of successful change.

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The organizational development experts who advised the Learning Newsroom cite the following as among some of the more useful texts on organizational change. Learning Organization

Leadership & Culture Change

Experiential Learning; David Kolb; Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ); 1984.

Enlightened Leadership: Getting to the Heart of Change; Ed Oakley and Douglas Krug; Simon and Schuster (New York); 1993.

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization; Peter Senge; Currency Doubleday (New York); 1990.

The Challenge of Organizational Change; Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Barry Stein, and Todd Jick; Free Press (New York); 1992.

The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook; Peter Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte Roberts, Richard Ross, and Bryan Smith; Currency Doubleday (New York); 1994.

Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will; Noel Tichey; Currency Doubleday (New York); 1993. Corporate Culture and Performance; John Kotter and James Heskett; Free Press (New York); 1992.

The Learning Company; Mike Pedler, John Burgoyne, and Tom Boydell; McGraw-Hill (New York); 1991.

Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge; Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus; Harper and Row (New York); 1985.

Out of the Crisis; W. Edwards Deming; MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study (Cambridge, MA); 1986.

Leading Change; John Kotter; Harvard Business School Press (Cambridge, MA); 1996.

Overcoming Organizational Defenses; Chris Argyis; Allyn and Bacon (Needham, MA); 1990.

Organizational Culture and Leadership; Edgar Schein; Jossey-Bass (San Francisco); 1985.

The Path of Least Resistance; Robert Fritz; Fawcett-Columbine (New York); 1989.

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence; Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee; Harvard Business School Press (Cambridge, MA); 2002.

Systems Thinking; A Language for Learning and Acting (A Workbook); Innovation Associates (Framingham, MA); 1992. Towards the Learning Organization: A Guide; Jinny Belden, Marcia Hyatt, and Deb Ackley; Self-published; (St. Paul, MN); 1993.

Taking Charge of Change; Douglas Smith; Addison Wesley (New York); 1996. Who Says Elephants Canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Dance?; Louis Gerstner, Jr.; Harper Business (New York); 2002.

The Wisdom of Teams; Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith; Harvard Business School Press (Cambridge, MA); 1993. 155

Learning Organization Self-test for Media Companies

Are you transforming to meet marketplace change? INSTRUCTIONS:

Answer the following 30 questions to assess your organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to change:

1. There is an expectation that everyone will stay abreast of the latest information around news consumption. 2. We make time for conversations about how we should change in order to remain relevant and vital. 3. Employment in our organization carries with it the responsibility and the promise of continuous learning. 4. Supervisors support and make time for professional development tied directly to company goals. 5. We track training hours and outcomes. Training and development are reflected in employee evaluations. 6. When a need for new a skill set becomes apparent, our organization builds a critical mass of knowledge in that area. 7. Frontline staff has input in planning training. 8. We have a clear and well-communicated vision for the future expressed in concrete, actionable priorities. 9. Everyone on staff is kept abreast of market research, competitive threats and organizational strategy. 10. Staff feels free to speak candidly about the quality and impact of our products and services. 11. The context of important decisions is communicated by management so there is no need to rely on rumors. 12. People at all levels are open to feedback about their work. 13. Managers teach and coach employees. 14. We are engaged in readership growth strategies such as those developed by the Readership Institute. 15. We brainstorm about consumer expectations of content selection, delivery. advertising. 156

STRONGLY SOMEWHAT NEUTRAL DISAGREE DISAGREE

SOMEWHAT STRONGLY AGREE AGREE

STRONGLY SOMEWHAT NEUTRAL DISAGREE DISAGREE

16. We are encouraged to understand how our work affects others and the operation of the entire news organization. 17. Everyone understands how “the business side” of our company works. 18. We constantly review the way we do things in order to improve existing processes and act on the best ideas. 19. We talk about what practices or products should no longer command the same amount of our time. 20. Our employees practice good time management and organization. 21. Ours is an organization that fosters innovation. 22. We have clear performance expectations and recognize and reward changed behavior. 23. There is an expectation that employees will cooperate with others and respect other team members’ needs. 24. Our leadership style is to involve others in decisions affecting them as often as possible. 25. We value diversity of every type, including diversity of experience. 26. We know conflict is normal and healthy, and can disagree respectfully to get the best ideas on the table. 27. People feel that it is OK to say “I don’t know” and ask for help. 28. Supervisors help others think for themselves and do not unnecessarily push decisions upward. 29. Managers trust people to do good work and don’t feel as if they have to personally run everything. 30. Anyone who works here would say our organization is taking steps to respond to the changing marketplace. 157

SOMEWHAT STRONGLY AGREE AGREE

Score your readiness for transformation Count the number of checks in each column of the self-test statements Then Multiply each score by

STRONGLY DISAGREE

SOMEWHAT DISAGREE

NEUTRAL

SOMEWHAT STRONGLY AGREE AGREE

Equals

Total all columns for your final score.

What your score means: 121 - 150

Your organization follows many of the best practices of a learning organization and should do well at efforts to improve workplace culture in order to have the best likelihood of success in the changing media marketplace.

91 - 120

You are well-equipped to improve workplace culture for the sake of the organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future, although your answers signal areas needing additional attention.

61 - 90

Your company has some distance to go to become a learning organization but should build on strengths and tackle the weaknesses apparent from the responses above.

31-60

Your organization would be wise to devote attention to training and development, communication, business literacy, process improvement, innovation, time management, leadership and other workplace practices.

30 or less

Learning organization practices are not likely to be apparent in your workplace and efforts at culture change would not succeed at this time.

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Training Tracker Editors who want to train more strategically should analyze current costs, benefits and topics. As part of the application process, the Learning Newsroom pilots provided an inventory for the previous 24 months with breakdowns in four categories.

Training off-site NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES PARTICIPATING

Name of training

DURATION IN HOURS

DIRECT COST IF ANY

DURATION IN HOURS

DIRECT COST IF ANY

DURATION IN HOURS

DIRECT COST IF ANY

DURATION IN HOURS

DIRECT COST IF ANY

Training on-site with outside experts NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES PARTICIPATING

Name of training

Training on-site with local experts NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES PARTICIPATING

Name of training

Training on-site with staff experts NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES PARTICIPATING

Name of training

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Learning Newsroom benefited from the support of a number of individuals during its three-year project life. Editors Bob Zaltsberg, Bob Gabordi, Dave Solomon, Dana Robbins, Mike Jenner, Libby Averyt, Kathleen Rutledge, Dave Zeeck, Susan Goldberg and Mike Connelly made the decisions to test the Learning Newsroom’s formula for change in their newsrooms, both for the lessons that might be learned there and on behalf of newspapers everywhere. Along with Nick Pappas and Susan Ihne, who inherited the project upon their selection for the top editing job at newspapers where the pilot work was under way, they are due many thanks. Hundreds of journalists across the 10 pilots are due credit for participating in projects that improved operations, launched new products or yielded other noteworthy outcomes of the Learning Newsroom work. Topping the list are the steering committee members who started conversations, suggested bold ideas and carried the torch for change in their newsrooms – generally in the face of more resistance than support from their peers. The contributors to this book showed great dedication in mining every bit of learning possible from their experiences that could be useful to other newsrooms facing the need to transform in order to grow audience and ensure a viable future for their organizations. Consultants Pierre “Pete” Meyer and Toni Antonellis offered skillful advice and went above and beyond in their commitment to the project. Valuable post-work analysis was provided by Robert Cooke of Human Synergistics. Providing essential leadership and guidance for the project were API President and Executive Director Drew Davis, ASNE Executive Director Scott Bosley and Knight Foundation Vice President/Journalism Program Eric Newton. My thanks as well to the Learning Newsroom Advisory Boards 20042007, most especially API Vice President of Programming and Personnel Carol Ann Riordan; Michele McLellan, director of Tomorrow’s Workforce; and Warren Watson, director of Ball State University’s J-Ideas. API Associate Director Mary Glick edited this book and API Associate Director Mary Peskin designed it.

About the author Vickey L. Williams joined the staff of the American Press Institute in February 2004 as Learning Newsroom project director to develop and oversee this three-year joint venture with the American Society of Newspaper Editors. She formerly was corporate editorial director at Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., based in Birmingham, Ala. There she worked closely with the Readership Institute to train CNHI editors, publishers and other executives on readership research findings and to develop responses to the changing needs of today’s news consumer. Previously she held editing or reporting positions at seven daily newspapers ranging in circulation from 7,500 to more than 300,000, including The Tampa Tribune, The Oakland Tribune and The Birmingham News. Williams also led training sessions on a host of editorial subjects in more than 100 newsrooms and for numerous industry organizations. She is a journalism graduate of Auburn University.

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The Learning Newsroom At the American Press Institute www.LearningNewsroom.org

American Press Institute 11690 Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, VA 20191 (703) 620-3611 www.AmericanPressInstitute.org

American Society of Newspaper Editors 11690B Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, CA 20191-1409 (703) 453-1122 www.ASNE.org

Funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Wachovia Financial Center, Suite 3300 200 South Biscayne Boulevard , Miami , Fla. 33131-2349 (305) 908-2600 www.KnightFdn.org

ISBN-13 978-0-9794204-0-5